Teacherscribe's Teaching Thought #17

Teaching Thought #17

In prepping for my UND Teaching and Learning 250 class a few years ago, I came across this interesting read, Ten Things Teachers Should Unlearn – I revisit it before every school year.

Second thing teachers should unlearn: Teachers have to be in control of the class

My best classes occur when I’m “running with the natives.”  That is, my best classes occur when I’m a co-learner with my students.  I’m certainly not in control.  Students are.  They always are.  The trick I’ve come to find is to help turn them on to the work that really matters to them so they will take charge of their own learning.  Truthfully, this happens rarely in my classes, but it happens and it’s always the most rewarding time.

When it finally dawned on me that teachers ‘don’t’ have to be in control of the class, it was a turning point for me.  This happened all the way back in 1998, my first year teaching.  

I stressed myself out so much trying to control my classes.  I had great, complicated lectures planned.  I had notes painstakingly detailed to show the students how much I knew about the literature we were studying (“The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” “The Cold Equations,” A Separate Peace, and Julius Caesar).  I had essay tests.  I had my classes structure just like the college classes I’d excelled at so much over the past four years.

No wonder the students didn’t want to pay attention!

I thought, if I were there parents, I’d ground them.  If I was their coach, I’d bench them.  If I was their girlfriend/boyfriend, I’d dump them . . . There had to be some way to control them and make them do what I wanted them to do.

But then it hit me: I wasn’t the one in control.  I couldn’t be.  No one can make another person do something they don’t want to do.  

Once I had that revelation, it was like a burden was lifted.  

Over time – and just because I had that revelation didn’t mean my next class was totally engaging – I began to focus more on what the students enjoyed (the jokes I cracked and the connections I made between what we were reading and what was going on in pop culture or current events) and I stopped doing less of the stuff that bored them to tears, painstakingly complicated notes and lesson plans.

And I’ve been doing that ever since.  Twenty years later now.