Do You Truly Believe in the Ability of Your Students?

As we continue our summer series, I want us to tackle a question that sits at the very heart of our profession: Do you truly believe in the ability of your students?

It's easy to say we believe in them. We tell them they're smart, capable, and full of potential. But what do our actions, particularly our pedagogical choices, really communicate?

When we stand at the front of the room, lecturing for the majority of the class, are we signaling belief or doubt? When we dictate every assignment, every step, every answer, what message are we sending? All too often, a classroom built purely on lectures and an authoritarian style subtly communicates: "I don't fully trust you to think for yourselves. I don't believe you can discover knowledge or formulate ideas without my constant direction." 

This approach, however well-intentioned, can inadvertently stifle curiosity, independence, and critical thinking. It teaches students to be passive recipients rather than active participants in their own learning.

The Power of Student-Led Learning

Now, imagine a different classroom. Imagine one where your students are not just present, but active. Where their voices aren't just heard, but are the very engine of learning. This is the power of a discussion-based, student-led classroom.

When you shift from being the sole dispenser of knowledge to becoming a facilitator, you are making a profound statement: "I believe in your capacity to learn, to question, to lead, and to teach each other."

Consider the impact of:

(1) Student-Led Discussions

Instead of you always posing the questions, empower students to generate their own. Let them grapple with complex texts, historical events, or scientific theories, guiding their peers through inquiry. This builds confidence, communication skills, and deeper understanding.

(2) Collaborative Projects

Move beyond individual worksheets to projects where students must rely on each other's strengths, problem-solve together, and collectively create something new. This fosters teamwork and accountability.

(3) Inquiry-Based Learning

Give them a question or a problem, and let them design the path to find the answers. Provide the resources, the scaffolding, and the support, but allow them to drive the investigation.

This isn't about chaos or relinquishing control. It's about strategically designing learning experiences where students take ownership. It's about providing the framework and then stepping back, allowing them the space to wrestle with ideas, articulate their thoughts, and even make mistakes and learn from them.

Showing, Not Just Telling

A discussion-based, student-led approach is arguably the most powerful way to show your students that you genuinely believe in their abilities. You are not just telling them they are capable; you are demonstrating it through the trust you place in them. You are empowering them to become independent thinkers, resilient problem-solvers, and engaged citizens—skills far more valuable than rote memorization.

As you plan for the upcoming school year, reflect on your classroom practices. Where can you cede a little more control? Where can you invite more student voice, more student leadership, and more genuine collaboration? When we empower our students, we not only foster incredible growth in them, but we also rediscover the immense joy and purpose in our own teaching.

What's one small step you can take to foster more student leadership in your classroom next year?

Lead, Don't Manage: Unlocking the Student-Led Classroom

We've all been there. The bell rings, and we launch into our meticulously planned lesson, guiding students through the material, ensuring they hit every learning objective. It's effective, no doubt. But have you ever felt like you're constantly, well, managing? Managing behavior, managing attention, managing the flow of information?

What if I told you there’s a subtle but profound shift in mindset that can transform your classroom from a teacher-driven engine to a student-powered enterprise? It's simply this: students want to be led, not managed.

Think about it. Management implies control, oversight, and a hierarchical structure. We manage projects, we manage budgets, we manage our time. But do we really want to manage young, curious minds? Or do we want to lead them?

Leadership, in contrast, inspires. It empowers. It sets a vision and then trusts individuals to find their own paths to achieve it. When we lead our students, we're not just delivering content; we're cultivating independence, critical thinking, and a sense of ownership over their learning journey.

This isn't about abandoning your role as the expert or throwing out your lesson plans. Far from it. It's about recognizing that our students, even the most seemingly disengaged, possess an innate desire for agency. They want to understand why they're learning something, they want to feel a sense of purpose, and they want the space to explore and discover.

So, what does this look like in practice?

It means stepping back from the constant micromanagement of every task. Instead of dictating every step of a project, provide a clear framework, define the desired outcomes, and then empower your students to devise their own strategies to get there. Offer choices in how they demonstrate their understanding, allowing them to lean into their strengths and interests.

It means fostering a classroom environment where questions are celebrated, mistakes are seen as learning opportunities, and collaboration isn't just encouraged, it's integral. Think of yourself as the experienced mountaineer guiding a team up a challenging peak. You provide the map, the essential gear, and the expert advice, but you don't carry them. You trust them to navigate the terrain, to support each other, and to find their own footing.

When you lead, you ignite intrinsic motivation. When you manage, you often rely on external motivators. A classroom built on leadership allows students to discover their own drive, to set their own goals (within your established parameters), and to experience the immense satisfaction of genuine accomplishment.

This isn't about setting each student on a separate, solitary track. Instead, it's about embracing personalized learning, where student agency drives the classroom. Your role shifts from simply controlling the flow of information to guiding and empowering the collective energy and initiative of your students, helping them discover their unique learning pathways within a collaborative environment.

Imagine the hum of a classroom where students are actively engaged, collaborating, problem-solving, and truly invested in their learning. That's the power of leading, not managing. It’s a powerful transformation that will not only lighten your load but, more importantly, equip your students with the skills and confidence they need to thrive long after they leave your classroom.

This first post in our summer series is all about preparing to transform your teaching. Your first step this week: identify just one small way you plan to transition from managing to leading when students return. It could be as simple as planning to offer choices, delegating responsibilities, or crafting an open-ended question for the first unit of the year that will allow your students to explore the content rather that having the content explained to them. 

Get ready to be inspired by the remarkable self-direction your students are capable of. This summer, let's empower them to find their own way next school year.

The Power of Small-Group Discussions: Fostering Essential Skills in the Classroom

In today's fast-paced and interconnected world, it is crucial for students to develop a diverse set of skills beyond traditional academic knowledge. The classroom environment presents a unique opportunity for students to hone vital skills such as communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, mindset, and effort. One effective way to cultivate these skills is through small-group discussions.

Communication:

Small-group discussions provide students with a platform to express their thoughts and ideas effectively. By engaging in meaningful conversations with their peers, students learn to articulate their opinions clearly, actively listen to others, and ask thoughtful questions. These communication skills are essential for success in all aspects of life, be it further education, professional careers, or social relationships.

Collaboration:

Working in groups allows students to develop crucial collaboration skills. Through small-group discussions, students learn how to work together towards common goals, share responsibilities, resolve conflicts, and harness the collective intelligence of the group. These skills are particularly valuable in today's team-centric workplaces, where success often hinges on effective collaboration and cooperation.

Creativity:

Small-group discussions provide a fertile ground for creative thinking and problem-solving. Encouraging students to generate unique ideas, think outside the box, and explore alternative perspectives cultivates their creative thinking skills. By bouncing ideas off each other, students also learn to refine and build upon initial ideas, ultimately leading to more innovative and well-rounded solutions.

Critical Thinking:

Small-group discussions help develop students' critical thinking skills by encouraging them to analyze information, evaluate different viewpoints, and form well-reasoned arguments. Engaging in these discussions helps students develop the ability to examine issues from multiple angles, identify biases, and draw logical conclusions. These critical thinking skills are crucial for making informed decisions and engaging with complex issues in the real world.

Mindset:

Small-group discussions create a positive and supportive learning environment that fosters a growth mindset. Through respectful interactions and constructive feedback from peers, students develop resilience, perseverance, and the belief that their abilities can be improved over time. This growth mindset is essential to overcoming challenges, embracing learning opportunities, and achieving personal and academic growth.

Effort:

Small-group discussions require active participation and contribution from each student. By actively engaging in these discussions, students learn the value of effort and the importance of being actively involved in their own learning. The effort put into preparing for and participating in small-group discussions fosters a sense of responsibility and ownership over their education.

In conclusion, small-group discussions in the classroom provide a powerful tool to nurture essential skills such as communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, mindset, and effort. These skills are not only crucial for academic success but also prepare students for the demands of the real world. By incorporating small-group discussions into the classroom, educators can create an environment that fosters holistic development and equips students with the skills necessary to thrive in the 21st century.

Step 3: Acclimation

Getting students used to a new school year is difficult.  Getting them used to discovery-based and discussion-based learning is even more difficult.  So how would things go in the middle of a pandemic, after the kids had been out of the classroom for six month?

Surprisingly well.

I chose to use the opportunity to refocus the class in a way that I believe is better, and have for a long time.  If we're honest about it, the vast majority of the skills learned in high school mathematics are going to be useless to most of the students after they graduate, or at the very least after they take their last math class in college. We claim that the point of math classes is to teach things like critical thinking and problem solving, but then we end up doing all of the critical thinking and problem solving for the kids, asking them to simply repeat the process we show them.  This means that we're the ones doing the actual work, and the kids are just doing what they're told, and the process does not improve the students' ability to think critically or problem solve.

So, the refocus was to emphasize critical thinking, problem solving, perseverance, and other honest-to-goodness life skills, using the math as the means to this end.  Learning the math skills is still there, but the purpose is the process of learning the material rather than on the material itself.

To drive the point home, I chose a "theme of the week" that looks more like life coaching than math class.  Things like "Being Intentional", "Mindset and Skill Set", and "Adjust and Adapt" were emphasized at the beginning of each week, along with having the students set their goals using what I refer to as Setting their G.P.S. :

G = goal; What is your goal for the week?

P = purpose; What is the real purpose of the goal? What is the "why?" sitting underneath it?

S = skill; What skill will you need to have or need to cultivate to accomplish the goal?

All of this set the stage for the kids to do the heavy lifting of learning the material by working through the  slides with support (but very little if any direct instruction) from me.  From the beginning, I pushed the fact that if I showed them what to do and how to solve the exercises, it would interfere with the critical thinking and problem solving that we were actually working on.

And they bought in. Well, most of them.  There are always a few holdouts, until they realize I'm serious about being less helpful when it comes to showing them exactly what to do but being completely helpful when it comes to supporting them and guiding them in their discovery.

Unit 1 was tough, as always.  Unit 2 was relatively smooth.  By unit 3, we were rolling, and it lasted the rest of the year.  And this year has followed suit. Same emphasis, and so far, same results.

Step 2: Materials

Having made the decisions about how the groups would operate, it was time to write the discussion questions.  Much as I really like the discussion questions we have for running the classroom in a more authentic Harkness format, I knew from the previous spring that remote learning wasn't really conducive to it.

So instead, I condensed the questions we had from 48 down to 16 questions per unit, rewrote them as needed make them flow more smoothly, and then broke them up into sets of four so that the "information delivery" portion of the class - which was really more discovery-based - would be completed in four regular-length class days during the first week of each unit.  These sets of questions were then placed on Google Slides, and the students needed to take pictures of their hand-written work, place the work on the corresponding slide, and turn in the slide for feedback.  If we ended up being at school, the slides would be a good way to organize their work.  If we ended up working remotely, the slides would be a convenient way to see how the groups were handling the material.  Win-win.

The second week of each unit was used for two purposes:
(1) Practice the skills covered in the slides. This was done using MyMathLab, a Pearson product we use in our upper-level classes.
(2) Create exercises that demonstrate a solid understanding of the material.  I gave the students some requirements, and their task was to create as few exercises as possible that met them.

The third week of each unit was used to allow each group to provide written solutions to the exercises they created, and then explain their reasoning by making a video for each exercise. 

Notably missing were tests.  Honestly, the exercises they created, answered, and explained were more difficult than anything I would normally put on a test, and I got more information from the written solutions and videos than I would have with a multiple-choice or short-answer test.  Plus, with these "mini projects", there was no make-up test to worry about.

We ended up being in-person for the entire year, but even the kids who were out for a few days due to illness or quarantine found the format easy to work with, and no one fell behind because they had missed school.  In fact, I ended up having a better feel for how well each student was doing day-by-day - so much so, that I'm planning to use the slides again this year, and have already created a set of slides for honors geometry, which as I've mentioned will be a new prep for me.

Next up: Getting the kids acclimated.

Step 1: Groups

 Picking up where I left off at the end of the previous post:

The first thing I needed to do was figure out how we were going to set up the groups for the discussions.  This had to have the flexibility of working for students in class, working for students if we ended up at home working remotely, and working for students who were not at school because they were sick/quarantined.  

So, the decisions that were made:

(1) Groups would change for each unit, and each group would ideally have four students.  This was big enough to have different ideas about how to attack a problem, and small enough to work in a remote setting.  It was also influenced by the fact that there are four main topics in each unit.  More on that in a later post.  

(2) Each group would have their own chat room. We have the GSuite for Education in our district, and Google Chat was perfect for this.  The students could share photos of their work if necessary, and quickly start a Google Meet for just their group without any previous setup needed.  In particular, joining their group on Google Meet worked out really well for the students who were quarantined, and was a good place for the entire group to share information after school and on the weekends. And while we never fully went remote last year, I could see that the chat rooms would have been great in that setting as well.  Also, I was a member of each chat room, and while it did mean my phone was receiving a lot of notifications, it also meant I could more easily keep track of how the groups were doing, how much and how well each member of each group was contributing, and so on.

(3) Each group chose a "table captain".  These were the students to whom the work was actually assigned, and they were responsible for sending the information out to the group and submitting the work done by the group.  This gave the students some leadership opportunities, as well as ownership of the work that was done.  The first unit of the year was a bit rough, but once everyone saw how things worked, it was smooth sailing from there.

With this part prepared, I moved on to creating the platform for working through the discussion exercises.  This will be the subject of the next post.

I Want a Repeat of Last Year

I want a repeat of last year.

No, that's not a typo.

There were so many good things that made the 2020-2021 school year one of the best years of teaching I've ever had, and I want them to happen again.

First, my attitude going into the school year was, "bring it on".  I spent about an hour a day during the summer of 2020 planning more intentionally than I had in a while.  I contacted teachers I know across the country to see how they were planning to work with the circumstances and still run their classrooms through discussions.  Some had great ideas, and I drew on them for inspiration to create the best possible environment in my classroom.  Others had already thrown in the towel in June and had chosen survival mode from the beginning.  I ignored them.  We get one chance, one year, to work with each group of students.  I wasn't willing to throw away the opportunity, covid or no covid.

I then worked to build a system of instruction that was "location independent", meaning that if we ended up being in school five days a week, or four days a week, or ended up working in a hybrid model, or ended up working remotely, the system of instruction would not change.  It had to have student discussions at the heart of it.  We all know that this is how learning happens best, and therefore I simply couldn't let that go.  It had to be as close to gradeless as possible, as I had seen the positive impact of this over the last couple years.  It had to be flexible so that if we changed from one format to another (in school to hybrid, for example), little to nothing would need to be changed in the class.  It had to be able to be used by students who were quarantined, meaning they could still participate in the discussions even though they weren't at school.  This wasn't going to happen by accident.  I needed to be intentional.  I needed to be focused.  And when the year began, I needed to be calm.  The students were already anxious enough.  They needed reassurance, directly and indirectly, that things were going to be ok.

What resulted was so much good stuff that I'm keeping a lot of it.  Most of it, actually.  And this year, I'll be applying the same ideas to teaching honors geometry, which is on my schedule for the first time in over twenty years.

So, over the next few posts, I'll be detailing the system I put in place, along with other things that were absolutely critical to making last year one of the best.  Hopefully, you'll get some ideas you can use.  If nothing else, I'm hoping you'll grab onto the mindset that was required to allow my classes to thrive last year.

You get one chance, one year, to work with each group of students.  Make the most of it.