Rise of the thinking teacher
Pratiksha Chopra
Defining a teacher isn’t straightforward. For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mingling of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. I will take it with a pinch of salt and contend that those tales are the consequence and not the process of being a teacher. One has to ring many bells in order to become a teacher. Looking at the roadmap, in and outside classrooms, the process of becoming a teacher is all about two rudimentary truths – how to help learners make sense of information (how to think) and how to communicate (language to think).
When I talk about making sense of information, I mean mobilizing information and analyzing ideas and facts. Where the latter is concerned, I would base my claim in conversations that teachers have or don’t have. Ten years of being a teacher and an additional three years of interacting with diverse teaching communities have made me a dyed in the wool pedagogue, who believes that ‘Students should be taught how to think, not what to think.’ and ‘Good conversations maketh good teachers’. No exceptions, no disclaimers, no doubts. So, allow me the freedom to converse now on this frequently trodden issue.
My tryst with ‘the teacher’ started with my political science teacher in 1998 who believed more in the philosophy of ‘being taught’ than ‘teach’. He was a meek-looking man with a thoughtful smile filtering through his beard, which held more meaning than what he ever wanted to actually convey. His classes began by drawing links with students and their styles of internalizing knowledge. While he facilitated, his mind was constantly fishing for evidence of comprehension in students. Can comprehension be visible in students (beside the eternal nodding)? He provided us text structures to concretize information, a more interesting frame for comparison and contrast, yet another one for ways the topic impacted our lives. He taught us to think in frames. His subject was the only one in my entire schooling that witnessed copious annotations in my books, contextualized doodles and a mysterious bent towards poetry.
Imagine a political science teacher infusing Kahlil Gibran with revolutionary theories! Topics like Marxism turned into a springboard for us to construct knowledge, connect immediate realities – written and actual, express understanding in a language that was functional, and build an outlook on an issue. In a way, he became an emissary of metacognition in a small town classroom a decade and a half ago, and I hold him completely accountable for sowing the seeds of a teacher in me. A teacher who would believe in the power of conversations – with texts, students, and non-verbal inclinations.
Strangely, I understood the impact of what he was trying to achieve the previous year, when I studied metacognition during my research at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. Metacognition not just piqued my curiosity, but posed a question to my own teaching/training practice. I came back and fervently put into gear the metacognitive strategies and routines suited for specific learning objectives and array of learning age groups. I also wanted to find out if the concept worked in under-resourced, language-deficit and three-tier city classrooms, where teachers were hardly exposed to any new ideas about teaching.
Fortunately, I found my subjects in the teachers of a newly established school in Firozabad, UP. I was supposed to initiate (read: make) teachers into the art of teaching. The next words that filled my training planner manual were – First, I need to have real and candid conversations with teachers about what they can and can’t do. I need to bring them face-to-face with themselves. Second, I need to work on employing text structures/thinking strategies in their classrooms in order to enable students to make sense of their learning. After about three interventions, the recent one with these teachers revealed some interesting findings. While the success the students experienced with the help of metacognition routines was visible, the teachers expressed that it was short-lived. I figured out the reasons soon enough.
Forgive me for generalizing, but the main reason amounted to teachers making every new idea/instructional strategy a one-time activity, isolated from the content. The reason these strategies are called routines is that these are intended to develop thinking habits rather than transient, topic-based success in classrooms. Teachers need to sustain the actions for sustained results. Students need to experience consistent trails of triumphs, simple to complex, to build trust in their own abilities and in the teacher. The roadmap is visible to the teacher. She can become ‘the teacher’ that s/he wants to become.
Let me run you through some of the metacognition routines I use for a contextualized understanding of my grunting. Feel free to use them for your students or organizing your own learning (try one of the routines on the very article you are reading).
The 4 Cs
After reading a text,
Connections: What connections do you draw between the text and your own life/learning?
Challenge: What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue with in the text?
Concepts: What key concepts or ideas do you think are important or worth holding on to from the text?
Changes: What changes in attitudes, thinking, or action are suggested by the text, either for you or others?
Sentence – Phrase – Word
In your discussion group, review the text that you have read and each select your own –
– Sentence that was meaningful to you, that you felt captures a core idea from the text.
– Phrase that moved, engaged, or provoked you.
– Word that captured your attention or struck you as powerful.
Next comes communication. Conversations. Reflections. Language. The first time I was applauded during my teacherhood was
because of the remarks I used to give in my students’ notebooks. Individualized. Contextualized. Detailed. Remarks like ‘Your essay makes me think of…’, ‘I am wondering how you made that connection’, ……. gave students a reason for positive reflection over their skills and encouraged qualitative and amplified self-image.
But what was I, as a teacher, doing? Conversing, with students’ work and indirectly forging strong bonds with them. Those remarks told the students that what they thought or wrote mattered and not brushed aside as a mechanical routine. They were reflected in the business of the classroom. And when students know that their word adds to the classroom climate, the teacher emerges.
Looking at the larger picture, the remarks formed just one component of my teacherhood. I had real conversations with students when I helped them find skin for their thoughts. By conversations, I mean powerful, unbridled, stimulating, authentic, eager and engaging conversations about school subjects or casual subjects, among peers and with teachers. One conversation at a time. The legendary QCT (Quality Circle Time) bears testimony to the success of conversations and forging trust and self-confidence in students. Collaborative learning in classrooms is a win-win situation for both teachers and students. Here, the focus of your conversation should be providing healthy nudges that students need from time to time to jump in, get engaged, manage themselves and the world around them more directly, positively and productively.
If you are wondering about why I am so crazed about strategies and conversations, you need to connect the threads. Agree you possess the passion, dedication, will, strength, innovative streak, tireless ability to work and love for kids! What next? How do you translate the semantics into visible and sustained trust and success of your students? How do you become a teacher? What do you do to see the results of your virtuousness? How do you act upon your ideas as well as influence the other stakeholders involved in the profession?
You move ahead to know your students and make them learn how to learn. You enjoy the interactions and look forward to results. And yes, you do not forget to pursue professional development, for becoming capable of engaging in, sharing control of and influencing events and institutions that affect students’ lives.
Returning to my original premise: great teachers do not teach. They stack the deck so that students have a reason to learn and in the process can’t help but learn mainly by teaching themselves. This knowledge then becomes permanent and cherished rather than illusory and irrelevant. And I can’t find a better way to cap my stream of thought than these lines from a rarely magnificent book called ‘Fierce Conversations’ by Susan Scott (DON’T MISS READING).
“The conversation is not about the relationship.
The conversation is the relationship.”
– Susan Scott (Fierce Conversations)
And dear teachers, this conversation hasn’t ended just because the conversation has ended. It just began. Have a reflective and gratifying teacherhood! And don’t forget to drop a line and connect.
Pratiksha Chopra is a Fulbright scholar and trains teachers in effective instructional methods in classrooms. An English Language Specialist, her interests lie in metacognition, visual literacy, poetry as an agent of change and applied theatre in classrooms. She can be reached at pratikshachopra@gmai.com.