Quotes from The Happy Teacher Habits: 11 Habits … by Michael Linsin
“It's about going deeper in just a few areas, which is always infinitely more rewarding and successful than sampling a bit of everything. Surfers who put in the time to learn the intricacies of their sport experience joy every time they paddle out into the waves, whereas those who dabble usually get a mouth full of saltwater and a sore back.
Pare down your life to the essential few. Defend your time and energy. Say no to everything that draws you away from your peace of mind. And your life will change.”
The best, happiest, and most confident teachers had classrooms that were notably lacking in clutter.
Overflowing cabinets, boxes piled in corners, art projects yellowing on the walls, papers and materials stacked on tables, and backpacks lying on the floor all compete for the teacher's attention. It's like having an additional ten students in your classroom.
If Joshua Bell had paid every person who walked by him that day 20 dollars to stop and listen, he would have had quite a crowd. But by paying them he also would have turned what was a once-in-a-lifetime experience into an obligation. It's the same with your students. When you pay them via rewards you ruin the joy of learning for its own sake. You sabotage your efforts to make your classroom a place they look forward to. But by eschewing rewards and focusing instead on immersing students into the subject matter, you transform them into self-motivated learners.
The wonderful thing about having a noteworthy aspect to each lesson is that it will excite you, too. It will automatically tap into that part of you that loves to teach. It will give you the opportunity to bring passion to your lessons. It will also keep you focused on your objective and naturally lead to the next step. It will conjure images, feelings, and memories that you're then going to use to bring depth and substance to your lesson in a way that will mesmerize your students.
Stories stimulate connections in the listener and have been shown to improve empathy and social skills, deepen understanding, and prompt predictions all the way up to a resolution. Nothing I've ever done as a teacher has had greater impact on learning, behavior, and enjoyment of school than storytelling. It's not even close.
"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." -Japanese proverb
Teaching gets more complex, more detailed, and more stressful every day. There is a great emphasis on “meeting the needs” of individual students rather than providing great instruction. The unintended effect is that teachers have taken on more and more responsibility for student behavior, performance, and work habits while students are taking on less and less. This has pulled teachers away from the front of the room and direct instruction, and brought them kneeling down beside one individual student after another. It's common for teachers to be more burdened with a student's progress than the student themself. In many classrooms, teachers carry the weight of a grand piano on their shoulders while students gad about without a care in the world. We've become so focused on setting students up for success that we've forgotten what it takes to succeed. We've forgotten that it's hard work by the student that leads to success. In the process, we've burned out scores of teachers and done a disservice to our students.
My comment: In order for this dynamic to be fixed the school administration, school board, and parent groups need to all be on the same page that they agree with this quote. Teachers need to know that students will be held accountable and the onus is not always on the teacher for student performance, even when the students are not carrying their weight.
Taking into account all other variables, the results were clear and surprising. Talent had nothing to do with it. The best students had practiced an average of 10,000 hours, the next best group had practiced 8,000 hours, and the bottom group a mere 4,000 hours. Most remarkably, there were no outliers. No student in the top group practiced less than 10,000 hours and no student who practiced 10,000 hours was out of the top group. Bill Heyde intuitively knew, long before Ericsson's research, that time spent actually writing, in deliberate practice, made us better writers. The same is true of every educational endeavor or subject matter.
In most classrooms these days, students aren't made to practice enough to build up their stamina for hard work or generate true confidence in their abilities. Because the teacher has so much invested in their success, and feels so much pressure for them to do well, they end up filling the time with their over-support. They repeat themselves again and again. They re-teach the same things over and over. They give too many clues, offer too much help, and accept far less than what is possible. They micromanage and talk their students through every this and that. Independent work times shrink further and further while teacher-led charting, brainstorming, diagramming, discussions, and guidance increase. The teacher then buzzes around the room stressed and overwhelmed, kneeling down to help one student after another, while many students sit idle and bored, frozen by learned helplessness. It isn't unusual for a great many students to get through entire days without doing any real, deliberate practice. Listening and attentiveness also suffer because students have learned that the teacher will always repeat, re-teach, and spoon-feed the curriculum to them. This unburdening students of responsibility also extends to behavior, with teachers cajoling, pleading, lecturing, and trying to convince students to behave instead of allowing them to feel the weight of their behavior choices. The secret to improving grit is to shift responsibility for learning and behaving in full to your students. It's doing your part by teaching compelling lessons through meaningful stories, connections, and context, and then letting your students loose to write the essay, perform the experiment, or solve for x with only reluctant additional support from you. It's giving your students increasing amounts of time to work, ponder, wrestle with, and overcome the challenges you place before them. It's planning projects, assignments, and presentations that take multiple steps and days, if not weeks, to complete. It's giving them the tools they need to do the work, and then letting them do it.
My note: Similar to my comment on another quote, in order for this method to work, the whole school needs to buy into it. The administration, school board, and parent groups need to explicitly buy-in. If only the teacher tries to instill this mentality in the classroom, students/administration/parents can accuse the teacher of not being helpful and not supporting. Teachers know this risk, so they are overly helpful. One way to follow this quote to an extent even without school support is to have a very clear method laid up front to your class on how you give feedback. For example, on mathematics assessments students know that I don’t give direct help on assessment math problems, I might underline where they went wrong or work another similar problem with them. (My current school has a mastery learning format.)
Additional note: This sounds good in writing and theory but now there are students and their parents who do not take seriously bad grades or they do take them seriously, but they put the burden and blame on the teacher instead of the student. They will ask how the teacher should have supported more instead of how the student could work more. Parents may put some blame on the student, but they will also put blame on the teacher as well. They will split the blame. And the teacher is more conscientious than the student, so the teacher will work and do what they can to show that they provided support … even then the student might not have completed the assignment or gotten a poor grade … because the parents and school have created a poor mindset in the student in which there is not individual accountability for the child and no consequences. They know that the consequences are much, much heavier for the teacher/the adult but not for them, the kid. And so they continue as an immature child and do not make the needed progress to maturity, accountability, and grit.
Great teaching in action often doesn't look like much. After a clear and concise (and inspired) directed lesson, the teacher is usually found off to one side, a step or two back, perhaps even leaning against the wall.
They're [teachers are] intent on not interfering with the concentration needed to work through difficulties and conundrums.
As surprising as it may seem, the way to create powerful, behavior-changing influence, leverage, and rapport with your students is to be consistently pleasant. The other surprise is that you never again have to go out of your way to engage individual students. In fact, as mentioned before, by doing so you risk making them uncomfortable. It more often has the effect of pushing them away and causing walls to go up, than the other way around. By simply having a nice and friendly disposition, though, your students will be naturally and irresistibly drawn to you—even, or especially, the most challenging among them. They'll want to be around you and get to know you better. They'll want to say hello to you and do nice things for you. And when students come to you, communication, then, and further bonding becomes effortless. The words you say will have meaning and impact and will be earnestly received.
This doesn't mean that you won't be brutally honest. It doesn't mean that you'll never tell them you're disappointed or that you expect more effort from them. It just means that you'll never again react angrily to misbehavior. Be consistently kind and they'll follow you in droves. This is why that student I hadn't seen in seven years treated me like a close family member. Although I didn't know her well at all, I had leverage and influence because of The Law of Reciprocity. In time, as you become more comfortable and consistent using the principle, you'll discover that the more you resist engaging too directly, the more powerful it is. So, not only do you not have to work hard to build relationships, it's best that you don't. There is, however, a catch. You see, The Law of Reciprocity also works the other way. So, for example, if someone perceives you to be mean to them, they'll have the desire to be mean to you right back. This is why when someone cuts us off in traffic, it's so hard not to want to do the same to them. But here's the kicker, and the reason so many teachers struggle with classroom management: When someone has formed a negative opinion of you based on your behavior or an incident or a comment you made to them, it's hard to change their mind. It's hard to win them back over. It takes time and patience and still sometimes never happens.
It is the same with your students. For every time you scold them, glare at them, or even give them the cold shoulder, you set your relationship back eons, sometimes irrevocably. Remember, the principle states that you must be consistently pleasant, not just pleasant some of the time or even most of the time. I know this seems impossible or even unrealistic given some of the behaviors you may see in your classroom. But here's the thing: The next principle makes actually doing it, every day of the year, not only possible, but entirely doable. The second principle is trust. Your students must trust you implicitly. They must know that when you say something, or say that you're going to do something, your words and actions are gold. This principle manifests itself most importantly in the form of your classroom management plan. By having a set of rules that cover every potential misbehavior, and by enforcing them 100 percent of the time, you're free from being in a position of creating friction or animosity with your students. In other words, you're going to let your classroom management plan do the heavy lifting for you, so you're never compelled to react in anger or frustration. It's key, though, that you follow through calmly and dispassionately. Your students must know that it isn't personal, that there are never hard feelings, and that forgiveness is always extended. If you add a lecture, a sarcastic remark, or your two cents worth, you'll risk reversing The Law of Reciprocity. You'll risk sabotaging your relationship and interfering with the accountability process. Being consistent and faithful to the boundaries of the class, without becoming angry or trying to coerce students to behave, engenders deep trust and respect. Combined with your pleasant personality, it's the secret to forever ridding your classroom of misbehavior. It also encourages self-reflection, protects your students from disruption and interference, and creates a learning environment they all love being part of. So many students privately dislike their teacher because they don't safeguard their right to learn and enjoy school. This creates resentfulness and the desire to misbehave behind your back. Allow your classroom management plan to stand sentry every minute of the school day, and misbehavior will dissipate and your influence will grow.
They [Teachers] discover that battling with students isn't really who they are, but was merely a crutch to try and get them through each day.
My note: If the school does not have a discipline matrix AND ENFORCE IT and the administration leaves the teachers to figure it out on their own, then this “crutch” phenomenon is likely to happen. If there is no support from administration, then teachers will by default go to the weaker crutch. And then administration tells teachers that they just need to “build relationships” when the lack of admin support is leading teachers to this crutch tactic, which is detrimental to relationships. Admin support enables teachers to have effective classroom management and effective relationships. And when admin does not enforce discipline, it leaves teacher demoralized, and teachers end up letting more behavior slide - hurting the classroom’s learning environment. This also leads to teacher burnout, and the kind-hearted teachers who want to form authentic, effective relationships with students end up leaving the profession because administration did not create the right conditions for proper learning and teaching.
the Law of Reciprocity, combined with your unwavering trustworthiness, that moves and influences students. Together, they're the arm and fulcrum that allow you to speak and teach and interact in a classroom where every student wants to please you. They're the foundation upon which you build a classroom both you and your students love coming to every day.