Teachers work hard. This is no revelation. It is just the truth, regardless of how many people make jokes about summers off. If everyone worked as hard as we do during the school year, they might need a few weeks to sleep too.
We have to be on top of our planning, monitor the progress of our students, deal with behavior management, communicate with parents, assess, go to meetings, sit on committees, prepare for the latest concert/art show/assembly/school sponsored event, etc. A very big ETC. Despite all of that, when our little friends are in the classroom with us, they should be working harder than us.
You heard me correctly. The students should be working harder than the teacher. They are supposed to be learning things and moving toward greater independence. You know, that.
While I believe most teachers are working with the greatest of intentions, I see far too many holding students’ hands and dragging them through the finish line. Let's see if any of this sounds familiar.
Do you remind your students roughly 700 times a day where the date goes on the page?
Do you entertain questions about how many words/lines/pages a piece of writing is supposed to be when it hasn't even been started yet and you don't teach high school where maybe this could be a relevant question? Do you work for hours to painstakingly make sure that each and every child has filled out the graphic organizer correctly?
I could go on, but these are definitely signs you are working too hard at the wrong things. (Our job is hard enough. Have I said that before?)
I was working with a teacher last week who felt daunted at the prospect of organizing her independent reading selections into baskets of characters who all had a specific trait in common. You know, shy characters, brave characters, mischievous characters, bullies. The idea of sitting on the floor for hours to create these baskets while the laundry wasn't doing itself, the gym was calling, she had a million other things to do made her want to put her head down and cry. Until she thought, "enough is enough" and, the next morning, asked her students to create the baskets themselves. Highly familiar with the selections in the independent reading library, her kids hopped to it, engaging in amazing conversations about which characters could be grouped together and why, what to label each basket, and what do to about characters who could go in multiple baskets. I mean, HOLY BRILLIANT, BATMAN! And you know what? This Super Colleague made sure her students were working harder than she was, allowing her to use her sacred time after school to devote energy elsewhere.
We all have these moments of clarity. Sometimes it is when we are alone in our classrooms and sometimes it is when we are in the thick of it that we realize, "this lesson feels too complicated," or "they are just not engaged with this work and I am up here killing myself." In those moments, I encourage you to stop. Just stop. Cut bait and move on with your day. Then, when you have a quiet moment (Ha!), consider these questions:
- Have you provided students with enough guided or shared practice?
- Have you provided students with the opportunity for oral rehearsal (before writing)?
- Is there another way to present this material/get this accomplished in which the children play a more integral role and take more ownership?
You work hard. Of course you do. But make sure your students are working just as hard, if not harder. It is the least we can do for them.
Jennifer Scoggin (a.k.a. Mrs. Mimi) is the director of the Connecticut branch of LitLife and a consultant in schools. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has been an IRA member since 2011. She's the author of the upcoming Be Fabulous:
The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom and It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name.