From the Mouths of Babes....

When we graduated from college, my wife and I married and soon after moved to Puerto Rico.  We taught in a small school up above San Juan for a year and then moved back stateside, where we took jobs teaching in my home town of Hesston, Kansas.  At Hesston Middle School, my sixth grade teacher taught across the hall from me, and my fifth grade teacher was right next door.  The transition from student to colleague was an interesting experience for all three of us working in that wing of the school.

Those memories from my first years in the classroom came to mind several weeks ago as I was speaking to the cadet teachers in Liz Trinkle’s class.  These cadets, perhaps future teachers, have spent this year going out into classrooms across the district to work with students in a wide variety of settings, from early childhood to grade eight.  In a little over four short years, these young men and women could be teaching across the hall from you.  It’s an interesting thought and one that is even more exciting after I received an email last week from Liz.

In her classroom, Liz had her students complete an exercise about Rock Solid Teaching, similar to ours at the beginning of this school year.  She divided the students into groups, gave them chart paper and markers, and walked them through a Placemat Consensus activity.  Students wrote on their own for a few minutes about what makes a Rock Solid Lesson and then came to consensus in the middle of the chart, recording the key characteristics.

Late last week Liz forwarded their results.  I have taken the consensus statements from each of the groups and combined them into a full list.  See if this looks familiar:

Rock Solid Teaching According to HSHS Cadet Teachers

Spring 2013

At the Beginning of Class

• The teacher grabs the attention of the student

During the Lesson

• Students are engaged and actively involved, not just listening
• The lesson is relevant and meaningful to the students
• Students feel free to ask questions
• Students have opportunities for collaboration
• Parts of the lesson push students to higher level thinking
• The lesson is varied and has opportunities for different kinds of learners

At the End of the Lesson

• The teacher checks for student understanding
• Follow-up activities reinforce the learning

Other Factors

• The teacher has a solid knowledge of the content 
• The teacher is positive and upbeat
• The lesson is well organized

I took a writer’s license to combine similar statements from the different groups, but this list summarizes the cadets' views on Rock Solid teaching.  Without a doubt, if a lesson followed this pattern, it would engage students in learning, and it would score very well on the Teacher Effectiveness Rubric.  Since Liz’s students are experiencing education from both sides of the desk right now, they have a unique perspective, and it is fascinating to see how they reinforce what we know about good teaching practice. 

Liz told me that one of her favorite sayings with her cadets comes from Cris Tovani, an authority on teaching secondary students to improve their reading skills: “School should not be a place where young people go to watch old people work.”

The cadets certainly didn't sit and watch during this lesson.  Their insight is worth noting.

Rock on, HSE!  Keep them going right up to the break.

Phil