The Management

Ahhhh, classroom management.

The bane of every first-year teacher’s existence. Well, maybe I should not speak for others, but it was certainly the bane of my existence that first year. That horrible sinking feeling as the room spins into chaos. Watching potentially-cooperative kids slowly go to the dark side as they give up on my ability to seize control of the situation. I would love to share some humorous anecdotes, but I think I blocked much of it from memory because when I try to retrieve it, there is very little there. Foggy scenes and words occasionally escape from the vault of my subconscious--the charming phrase “fugly bitch” drifts around in there somewhere.

Making it all worse was the feeling that I was hopelessly circling a drain with nothing to grab onto. Around Thanksgiving of that first year, I remember being told by a sagely 2nd-year teacher in one of my graduate school courses, “You know, they say that if you don’t set the right tone that first week, you’ve pretty much lost them.” I resisted the urge to smack him upside the head with my overpriced course packet. Why was he telling me this? There weren’t any puppies to kick on the way to class that day?

Furthermore, I was (as I think many aspiring teachers are) haunted by the ghost of inspiring-teachers-past. Well, inspiring-movie-teachers-past, anyway. Michelle Pfeiffer, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman--kicking butt and igniting dreams. Who wouldn’t want to follow in their footsteps? I am exaggerating. I was actually pretty aware of the silliness (and inaccuracy) of these teacher images. But it was still hard to resist the desire to be one of those magical teachers.

But that’s the trouble with those teacher images. They seem magical. They reveal an underlying belief that truly excellent teachers have a “special something”--zing, charisma--and that “special something” is not learnable. It is just something a lucky few are born with. And if you’re not born with it...well, then the most you can hope for is mediocrity.

Education courses, I found, also did little to demystify the art of magical teaching. For the most part, they focused on theory and history and left us to figure out specific classroom strategies and techniques on our own. This was not necessarily a bad thing. Some of those courses have helped me begin to think more deeply about teaching and develop my own pedagogical philosophy...but pedagogical philosophy is not terribly useful when hardcovers are zinging past your very reflective and introspective head. (“Ah, that must be one of my kinesthetic learners,” I thought to myself...)

People often say, “Oh, you can’t really teach someone how to teach. It’s just something you have to figure out as you go.” But that response is just not good enough! If we believe what much research seems to show--that the greatest factor in a child’s success in school is the quality of his or her teacher--then we sure as heck better figure out how to teach people how teach! Yes, what you learn from experience in the classroom is invaluable and no one will become an excellent teacher through reading, coursework and professional development alone, but this does not mean that we give up on trying to identify specific, successful strategies that can be taught, shared, and spread to the masses of struggling teachers who want to do better by their kids. There were days during that first year when I wanted to sneak up to the roof and spell out a giant “S.O.S.” in copy paper (if there had been any). “Somebody, please, teach me something I can use!” I wanted to cry.

You can imagine, then, how much my ears perked up when I recently heard similar sentiments echoed on a recent episode of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.” I turned up the volume and discovered that I was listening to an interview with Doug Lemov, the managing director of the Uncommon Schools network of charter schools. He was describing his reasons for writing his recent book Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. Lemov expressed having felt the same frustrations that I have when he was a young teacher. He could not get anyone to pin down specific--“actionable,” as he calls them--strategies that would help his teaching. This led him to do thorough research within the Uncommon Schools. He observed champion teachers who have had extraordinary success with their students--defying the statistical odds for kids in high-poverty areas, from Newark to Bed-Stuy. From picking their brains and watching them in action in the classroom, he named these 49 techniques and organized them into a very readable, approachable book.

I am very glad that I heard this radio interview. After hearing Lemov describe a few examples of techniques in the book, I went to the local bookstore and found a copy. There it sat on the Education shelf, and it was exactly the kind of book I would usually skim right by. My mom was a teacher for 10 years. When I followed in her footsteps, I inherited a ridiculous number of teacher books. It did not take much browsing to discover that the majority of these books offered the same brand of teacher wisdom that I found in grad school--thought-provoking and philosophical, but not very “actionable” (at least not in any immediate sense). They have since been collecting dust on the shelf.

I would have written Lemov’s book off as just another drop in the overwhelming sea of edu-babble, but thanks to the radio interview (and curiosity, because of friends who teach in the Uncommon Schools), I gave it a go and bought the book. It has been really helpful so far. I skipped straight to the chapters “Setting and Maintaining High Behavioral Expectations” and “Creating a Strong Classroom Culture.” Lemov gets right down to business and he is very thorough. For each of the tips, there is far more than just a summary of the technique. He includes a step-by-step breakdown, transcripts of teachers using the techniques in the classroom, and contingency plans for pretty much any “what if” scenario you could think of. There is even a DVD with clips of these techniques in action.

I started experimenting with some of the strategies (100%, SLANT, Do It Again) in the last 6 weeks of school. I know what you’re thinking. “New behavior-management strategies in the last month of school? Are you a glutton for punishment?” But, I swear, even in the last month, I began to see the effects of just these few strategies alone. Take the “Do It Again” technique, for example. Basically, Lemov explains that if students do not perform a routine task (a transition from mini-lesson to independent work, for example) the right way--quietly, quickly, efficiently, purposefully--then, you require them to do it again. At first, this did not strike me as a revolutionary idea. I had heard similar advice before. But whenever I had tried it in the past, it always came off as a kind of punishment. A power struggle. A sort of, “If you don’t do things the way I say, then I am going to torture you by making you do it over and over until you submit to my omnipotence! Mwa ha ha!” (Insert clap of thunder and ominous pipe organ music here.) But, joking aside, the way Lemov presents it, this method is not about a power struggle at all. All of these techniques, including “Do It Again,” are driven by the idea that your classroom is a space where time is precious and every moment is an opportunity to learn. Those moments must be protected with the ferocity of a mother lion. When delivered the right way, students understand that “Do It Again” is about making sure that we are not wasting time, that we are not throwing away any opportunities to learn, that we hold ourselves to the utmost standard within those four walls at all times.

I began using “Do It Again” (with the right spirit) with my students in May. There was some eye-rolling the first couple times, but within two days, doing things the “right way” had become our norm. In fact, by the end of the week, students were moving so efficiently and purposefully from the carpet to their independent work that I had to make a conscious effort to keep the surprise and giddiness from showing on my face. It freed up an enormous amount of energy and time to be given to our work rather than behavior problems. And if that was the result of implementing these techniques in May, just imagine what it will be like to establish these behaviors as the norm right from the first day of school. It makes me--dare I say it--almost wish it was September already!

I have been babbling about the book to just about anyone who will listen. This soon led me to learn from a charter-teacher friend that Lemov’s jargon has been a staple in the charter-school and TFA communities for years. “Oh yeah,” my friend said matter-of-factly, “Lemov’s Taxonomy.” Apparently, Doug Lemov is to charter-school teachers as Jeff Kinney is to my students. I felt like I had been raving for weeks about a fantastic little-known band I had just discovered, The Beatles. (You’ve just got to check them out). This realization brings me back to the running theme of my posts. There needs to be more communication between traditional public schools and charter schools. We have too much to learn from each other to let politics get in the way.

Lemov’s book is a big step in the right direction. He seems to have made an effort to make the book universal. While most of the blurbs on the back cover come from people associated with various charter school networks and the content of the book is coming straight from the Uncommon schools, the cover design and title of the book are neutral and the introduction invites all teachers to use these techniques. In fact, in the NPR interview that led me to buy this book in the first place, Lemov and Julie Johnson (one of the champion teachers cited in the book) both assert that these are techniques that can be used by any teacher in any situation, whether the techniques are embraced on a school-wide basis or not.

Like I said, I have not read the whole book yet. I have focused mainly on the sections that deal with behavior techniques. I plan to delve into the lesson-planning sections next, and there may be advice in this area which I will find less easy to reconcile with my current methods and beliefs. I work at a school which encourages a lot of student autonomy, choice and freedom in reading and writing. We do not read whole-class novels, for example, nor do we conduct universal genre units as a class. I believe deeply in the way we teach and wonder how my school’s philosophy will gel with Lemov’s ideas. I am curious to read Lemov’s take on rigorous lesson-planning and to look at my current methods through this lens.

At any rate, I recommend Teach Like a Champion to any teacher (whatever “type” they may be--traditional public, charter, private) who is interested in working on his or her classroom management. My guess is that this means all of us--perhaps with the exception of Michelle, Hilary and Morgan.