The practice of shadowing students

This last week I read an article that really caught my eye and made me think.  A teacher who had recently been promoted to an instructional coach was given the assignment of shadowing two different students for two days.  This coach had to do everything that the students had to do.  Here are some insights this coach walked away with:

1)  Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.

• Have you ever sat through a day long professional development?  How did you feel at the end of the day?  Exhausted, right?  I encourage you to look at your style of teaching and track how long your students just sit and get.  Our students need to be actively involved.  What CISD is doing with the instructional rounds where we are decreasing the amount of teacher talk time and increasing the amount of student talk time is right on.

2)  Students are passively listening 90% of the time.

• We need to help students make important contributions to their classes on a daily basis.  Brief high-impact mini-lessons followed by engaging checks for understanding is definitely the way we as educators need to be headed.  Again, I truly believe that the problems of practice that the instructional rounds are addressing is moving CISD in this direction.  Creating high level questions and having the patience with the students for them to process the questions is vital to students making critical connections with the material we are presenting to them.

3)  Students feel a little bit of a nuisance all day long.

• Here is another experiment for you to run in your classroom.  Count how many times the students are told to be quiet and pay attention.  It is hard for adults to sit and pay attention for as long as we ask students to sit and pay attention.  Again, get them involved in productive ways.
• Also, how do we respond to students when questions are asked about something that has just been explained?  Gentle answers go a long to developing great relationships of trust and respect.  Sarcasm, impatience, and annoyance create barriers between people.  I encourage you to dig into your wells of patience and love.

Please do not look at this as indictment to how teachers teach.  That is not the goal.  The goal is to improve our practice of teaching.  If you have a nudge of guilt tugging at your mind right now, some changes might need to be made.  I just encourage everyone to honestly look at how you are engaging students throughout the day.  All of us have areas where we need to improve.  Myself included.  If you would like to read the article yourself you can go to this link  A Veteran Teacher Turned Coach Shadows Two Students for Two Days - A Sobering Lesson Learned.  Enjoy.