I walked into a class as part of my usual walkthroughs and asked a student, “What are you learning? The student says, “Learning? I am listening to the teacher talk. Period, after period, after period…talk, talk, talk. All day long…talk, talk, talk. Can’t they just, ‘SHUT UP.’” The whole time she is talking to me she is gesturing with her hand as if to say, “blah, blah, blah.”

She continues, “Mr. D, for six periods a day I am talked at all day long…six hours a day…they just talk. Can you listen for six straight hours? Please, spend a day in my shoes. Go from class to class with me for a whole day and see what it is like to get talked at all day long.”

The next day we did just that. A teacher and I spent six hours shadowing this student from class to class and all we did was watch the teachers do all the work. Sadly, she was correct. As Hattie (2011) remarked, “I think it’s fascinating that we have a profession where kids come to school to watch us work” (para 10).

As Jackson (2018) notes, “Traditionally, most of the work in the classroom is done by the teacher. We plan the lessons, deliver the lessons, and assess the lessons. Sure, students listen to our lectures or watch our demonstration, take notes, complete the worksheets we create, and take the tests we choose or create, but often, the real work is done by us, the teacher” (Location 3299).

The teachers do all the work, and the students check out or simply pretend to play school. In fact, the teacher who was shadowing the student with me fell asleep during the third class of the day. The student, gently nudged the teacher and whispered, “Mr. I, wake up.” She then looked over at me and started to laugh and said, “I told you so.”

Oh, and by the way, the student who we followed from class to class was a sophomore who would eventually become the Valedictorian three years later.

Antonetti and Garver’s (2015) research of 17,124 classroom visits found that as the grade level for students increases, activities involving listening and watching increases. Specifically, high school students are attentive to the instructional task about half of the time while spending 63% of their class time listening and watching their teachers (Antonetti & Garver, 2015; Yair, 2000). Really think about this…63% of the time high school students are only asked to listen or watch, but their attention to this task is less than half the time!

Couple this with the fact that about half (47 percent) of students who dropped out of high school said that their classes were not interesting, and the picture gets even bleaker. “These young people reported being bored and disengaged from high school” (Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, 2006).

Teachers talk about 70 to 80 percent of the total class time (Hattie, 2012). “This dominance of teacher talk leads to particular relationships being developed in classrooms – mainly aimed at facilitating teacher talk and controlling the transmission of knowledge” (Hattie, 2012, Locations 1727-1729). This control leads to quiet, well behaved classes that respond to closed questions where thinking is at low levels (and in most cases no level of thinking at all).

We need to increase the challenge for students.

“Rigorous instruction is characterized by learning experiences that help students make meaning for themselves. Rigorous instructional strategies are how teachers help students learn how to manipulate, reorganize, and adapt what they are learning to new situations and apply what they are learning to new and novel contexts” (Jackson, 2011, p. 59).

Since the 2018 school year, 30% of the 870 visits I have completed had students involved in thinking at middle to high levels. That is, students making connections between several relevant facts/ideas and/or generalizing these connections to new domains.

Is 30% too low? Too high?

I don’t have an answer to that, but I do know that over the same time period, 154 classes (60%) had students thinking at middle/high levels and engaged compared to 26 classes (4%) that had students thinking at low levels or no thinking at all and engaged, a difference in proportions of .56. Classes where students are thinking at middle/high levels appear to be far more successful in having engaged students than classes that had no thinking or low levels (e.g., 60% versus 4%).

Simply stated, classes that had students thinking at middle/high levels were 13 times more likely to be engaged compared to classes that had students thinking at low levels or no thinking at all.

AND

The odds of students earning a higher grade are 64% higher when they participate in more engaging classroom tasks, as compared to when they participate in less engaging tasks.

“The more students perceive relevant instruction, the more they feel challenged, and the greater academic demand on students—the more students are engaged with instruction—the less prone they are to external preoccupations” (Yair, 2000, p. 256).

“If the teacher is doing all the work, the kids cannot learn as well as they should be learning. That’s why master teachers never work harder than their students” (Jackson, 2018, Location 3292). Students need to control the academic strategy not the teacher. For example, students need to compare and contrast, personalize or make unique decisions about content, create a new representation, or identify and extend patterns, NOT the teacher.

When students take control of an academic strategy for a classroom task they are 1.73 times (73%) more likely to earn a higher grade compared to not taking control of an academic strategy for classroom tasks.¹

So…let’s increase the challenge for students, thereby increasing student engagement and student achievement.

References

Antonetti, J. & Garver, J. (2015). 17,000 Classroom Visits Can’t Be Wrong: Strategies That Engage Students, Promote Active Learning, and Boost Achievement. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Bridgeland, J. M., DiIulio Jr., J. J., & Morison, K. B. (2006). The silent epidemic: Perspectives of high school dropouts. Civic Enterprises.

Hattie, J. (2011, June 10). Just shut up and listen, expert tells teachers. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au

Hattie, J. A. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on teachers. New York: Routledge. Kindle Edition.

Jackson, Robyn R. (2018). Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching, 2nd Edition. ASCD. Kindle Edition.

Jackson, Robyn R. (2011). How to Plan Rigorous Instruction (Mastering the Principles of Great Teaching series). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition.

Yair, G. (2000). Educational Battlefields in America: The Tug-of-War over Students’ Engagement with Instruction. Sociology of Education, 73(4), 247-269.SHUT UP