Thirty years ago, as a baby teacher, I took a classroom management class…five times; some adults, like some kids, take a little longer to process. In the years since I’ve realized it was much, much more than just classroom management class.
The class was called “Disrupting the Disruptor,” and it disrupted my career. It was my second year of teaching and I was wavering on whether or not I would continue in the profession. I was teaching the way I was taught and managing my classroom the way my classes were managed when I was in school — with traditional rules and consequences. It was not working for me, and “Disrupting” was a bit of a Hail Mary to save my career.
The class was taught by Dr. Gib Binnington, who insisted on being called Gib and introduced himself as a former teacher, principal and superintendent and bad actor. His class was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was a blast and unsettling at the same time.
The class had me woofing kids at the door, drawing dead body chalk outlines on my classroom carpet, giving binders time-outs and generally engaging kids in all sorts of nonsense. There were some serious sounding concepts in the class (flip the script, avoid power struggles, avoid ruts, draw energy from kids before they suck it out of you, etc.) but the bottom line was pretty simple — if you have fun with kids instead of exerting dominance over them you won’t get into oppositional struggles and management will be easy. It took me awhile but eventually I got it and had very few behavior issues in my classes over the next 15 or so years of teaching, and I have taught numerous classroom management classes as an administrator based on Gib’s principles.
In between all of this nonsense was a little non-management nugget which Gib would drop from time to time. Now, 14 years into my administrative career this nugget is one I find myself grabbing onto more each day.
“Stop teaching. If you are teaching they can’t be learning.” Gib would give his little sly smile, chuckle and move on.
He never really took time to dive deeply into this, but he gave us enough to understand that he believed if the teacher gets out of the way and allows kids to figure it out, the teacher will have discovered the key to launching deep learning.
Now, as we are on the brink of launching Peninsula School District’s first magnet STEAM school, Pioneer Elementary, with a different approach to learning, and as we try to crystalize our philosophy of learning more broadly at the district level, “stop teaching” seems smarter and smarter.
We know kids’ passion for learning goes down every year in school — we squeeze the love of learning out of kids slowly and painfully, year by year.
We know that kids who sit for long periods of time tune out. We know that when a teacher stands at the front of the room talking and calling on kids with hands raised — what we traditionally consider “teaching” — most kids are not engaged, not learning.
As a teacher the “stop teaching” idea only stuck with me around the margins of my craft. I would give kids some choices in a workshop format and allow kids to make some choices on assignments, but I was still teaching. I was grading, I was traditionally assessing, I was controlling almost all aspects of the class. I clearly see now that when kids have an opportunity to pursue their passions, to learn in ways which works for them, to collaborate with other kids in class with the same passions and to have the freedom to pursue learning where it takes them, nothing can stop them.
So how does a teacher stop teaching but still ensure learning for ALL kids? That sounds hard — for good reason — but occurs in schools and classrooms around the country every day. As leaders we need to give teachers tools and other support to help them make the transformation. We need frameworks and tools to help teachers understand all of the elements of deep, learning-driven experiences, rather than a day-by-day curriculum.
This learner-centered approach is energizing and has our entire team embracing this challenge with energy and passion, but really isn’t new. Gib handed it to me 30 years ago, I just wasn’t ready to accept it. Better late than never to help teachers stop teaching so all kids can learn.