connected principals - less time teaching, more time learning

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Less Time Teaching, More Time Learning

This post originally appeared on the Education is My Life site, which

has several offerings aggregated byA.J. Juliani.

I dont remember much about what I learned in elementary school, butI do remember how much I cared about my teachers, and inversely,

how much they cared about me. The teachers that meant the most to

me were the ones who understood that I was a very active kid who

could not sit still for anything; and if you look back at any of the

pictures that I had to colour in as a student, you would find many

unfinished pieces of art. To say I became bored easily would be an

understatement and I constantly needed to move on to the next

challenge.

AN ASSIGNMENT WORTH REMEMBERING

Then in grade three, I had an assignment that I will never forget.

Actually, I could not tell you much about what the assignment was,

but I could tell you a lot about the process and product that I created.

We were asked by our teacher to do a report on a country that we
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were interested in other than Canada. She did not give us a list of

countries, but she laid out a lot of images of different countries and

asked us to look around to figure out which ones we were interested in

writing about. (I often wonder what she would have done with the

Internet during this project.) As I looked through the images, I was

totally drawn to the country of Brazil and knew that was what I wanted

to learn more about. Instead of sharing what things we had to write

about for our grade, she asked us to develop questions of what we

wanted to learn.

Huh? You want ME to develop the questions? How will I know what

you want me to show you if you dont tell me what you want?

I was actually a little upset about the assignment at first. At a young

age, I had already seemingly mastered school. You tell me what youneed, and I will give you that. You ask the questions, I give you the

answers. A very simple process and probably why I dont remember

much about my learning in elementary school.

Mrs. Sloane, who was our social studies teacher that year had thrown

me off. This seemingly was way too much thinking and not enough

doing. So as I started to go through a ton of encyclopedias, books,

pamphlets that I picked up from a travel agent, and basically anything

that I could explore, I started asking more questions. In fact, 40 pages

into the project (this was grade three remember), every page startedoff with a question that I had asked and then continued to explore.

Brazil became my obsession. For someone who lost interest quickly in

every assignment, I was taking this project home at night and could not

stop working on it. Even after I had handed it in, I still continued to

explore the country and wanted to know more. To this day, Brazil

remains on my bucket list of countries I would like to visit because of

that project. To be honest, I know that I did very well on this

assignment, but I have no idea what my mark was. This was my grade

three masterpiece!

PRACTICE WHAT I PREACH

Fast forward to my own teaching career where I started doing what I

expected a teacher should do. I give you the information, ask you a

question, and give me the answer. As I had mastered the system of


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school as a student, I also had mastered it as a teacher. My classes

were always in the highest percentile for our standardized exams

because I drilled and destroyed their love for learning. No time for

questions, just show me you know the answers. I was very personable

and kids like being in my class, so I really had no idea what I was doing

long term to these kids.

Then one year I was asked to teach the Health curriculum to students

which I was not too excited about. At this time, Health was meant to

be taught 40 minutes a week, and there was no provincial exam for it.

It drove me crazy that I had to teach a class where my students

werent measured. I was angry not because it measured them as

learners, but really, it measured me as a teacher. High marks equaled

good teaching. Pretty simple.

So since the Health curriculum was the least of my concerns and a

subject that most of our kids hated, I decided to take the lazy way out

and try something different. I took all of the curriculum objectives,

put them on a board and told the kids that we were going to try

something different. They would pick one of the objectives that they

were interested in, and teach it to the class. My time would be more

focused on planning for the important subjects and in reality, they

could do the teaching for me. The kids looked at me as if I was crazy

when they should have looked at me as being lazy. They asked me how

they needed to present it and I simply told them that it would be up tothem. I would expect them to do what they need to learn about their

curriculum, explore some questions that they had about the objective,

and present in a way that they thought would be compelling to others.

I also told them that instead of doing this for 40 minutes a week, we

were going to spend every afternoon on it for a few weeks. To me, this

was a way to get through this curriculum so that I could do the other

stuff.

Then a weird thing happened. Kids everyday were coming to class and

asking, When are we doing health?, and it became their obsession.They were spending their lunch hours, home time, and any minute

going over their topic. I was no longer the teacher but acted more like

an academic advisor providing help along the way. Way less time

teaching and a lot more time learning. They were curious about their

topics in a way than if I stood in front of the room and shared with


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them my knowledge, I could not replicate.

WHEN LEARNING IS THE FOCUS

Everything changed for me after that assignment. Learning hadbecome the focus, not my teaching. Giving students the opportunity to

ask questions and explore on their interests took me back to grade

three and my project on Brazil. I have never taught the same way

again and I look back at some of the powerful elements of my

classroom environment that Mrs. Sloane showed me years ago:

1. Give students the opportunity to explore what they are

interested in.

2. Help them ask powerful questions.

3. Give them time to explore.

4. Students should be able to share what they have learned in a

compelling way.

As I travel and speak, I often look at what would be termed best

practice but I often wonder if that practice really serves the teacher

or the learner? For example, a rubric on what a student should learn

often give kids your ideas and doesnt help them develop their own.

Does this serve our kids after they leave our school? Will they see

rubrics anywhere in their life? These are just some of the questions

that I have and to be honest, continue to explore. As I focused on mystudents learning, my curiosity on what works in education has

developed. Luckily Mrs. Sloane taught me how to explore these

questions in grade three.

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