On Advice

Q: First year teachers get a lot of advice - from their peers, from mentor teachers, from best-practice authors - and sometimes it can start to get overwhelming. In fact, hearing about all of the amazing things that go on in successful classrooms can often make what is going on in one's own classroom seem pretty unspectacular. How should someone deal with information and advice?


Jack: I dealt with advice on teaching by compartmentalizing my understanding of the practice of teaching into teaching and my teaching. I would read people like Dewey and Freire and hooks and Gardner, I would talk with teachers I respected and admired, I would talk with Mike and Douglas and Moses, all in the effort to build my understandings of what good teaching is. But never during my first year did I compare myself to the standard that I was developing. Part of that is because I tend to think I know what I'm doing, even when I don't. But another part was a conscious effort to keep from feeling inadequate. I was overwhelmed already and didn't need to feel like there was any more to do than I already felt.

So what was the point of building "my understandings of what good teaching is" if I wasn't going to directly apply it to my own teaching? For me it was a matter of trust. I trusted that as I grew more comfortable in my classroom I would begin challenging myself to improve. Of course, as I continued to push myself to be better, I had an understanding of what "better" was. I was building my potential as a teacher, not my current competency.

To some extent, I am continuing to do that now. As a doctoral student, I'm away from the classroom, but I frequently think about teaching as a practice. If I stepped back into the classroom tomorrow and failed to implement everything that I know, there is certainly a part of me that would be frustrated. But I would also like to think that I would continue being patient with myself knowing that teaching, when it's done right, is a profession and not a job, and that it takes a lifetime to perfect it.


Douglas: I remember attending a lot of my colleagues’ classes during my first year, earnestly taking notes on each teacher’s class management, particularly effective phrasing, or course philosophy. Some teachers were great at lecturing, some were great at leading class discussions. Some were great at leading students through a logical progression, others were great at letting kids muddle around until they solved problems themselves. Some teachers had close relationships with kids, others were more formal.

All the styles worked or didn’t work. But it wasn’t about the style, it was about the teacher. There’s a lot of talk of best practices, but a lot of what happens in the classroom is the personality and passion of the individual teaching. Lecturing to a class is passé now since it doesn’t teach to all learners, but I’ve seen a class where students sat for 50 minutes mesmerized by a teacher’s lecture. It was the only way this teacher taught and kids LOVED it.

I’m going to steal an idea from Mike’s last post on coherence: you’ve got to have a thesis statement. Your thesis statement will be your declaration of educational belief, the ideal that you’d like your course and your classroom to reach. I think we all have one subconsciously, but writing one out is a good exercise. When you receive advice from peers or mentors or read pedagogy books, take only what makes sense to you and your thesis statement. You’ll be a better teacher for it, the teacher YOU were meant to become.

And talk a lot with others passionate about teaching. During my first few years teaching, I had many experienced mentors and went to a lot of professional development but I think what was most helpful for me was hanging out with Mike or Jack over dinner or after basketball, talking about what happened in class that week or what we were planning next. Finding colleagues willing and excited to talk about teaching, as equals, is the best way to feel alive in education while figuring out what will work for you.


Moses: I'm not going to try to answer this one, so much as reflect on the answer. I think Douglas has already said the bulk of what I'd like to say.

This may apply more after one has taught for a few years, but I think there's some inertia involved in planning your classes. Doing what you've done before requires less energy than reinventing the wheel. For new teachers, this might be adapted to 'doing what you that you'd do'. In both cases, though, it is harder to change directions than it is to do what you'd been planning to do. To borrow a metaphor from chemistry, there's an activation energy to any chemical change.

I think the only advice that ends up taking hold will be the advice that you want to let take hold. You take what feels like it works and leave what doesn't. A new idea or advice can be exciting, energizing, so much so that it feels worth it to go spend the energy to change your previous direction. This is where teaching can give back more energy than it takes, when the excitement of doing something that feels like it connects to the kids more smoothly is more than enough to overcome the effort it takes to put it into place.

In that sense, then, there's no science to what advice you take and leave. Take the ones that you want to take; leave the ones that don't make you excited to take them. Trying to shoehorn some advice in just because it sounds like you should but doesn't resonate with you will only leave you more tired in the end, I think. And I don't think students benefit from teaching that the teacher isn't invested in. It's sort of freeing, I think: you don't need to worry about passing on some bit of perfect advice because if it doesn't work for you, it just isn't perfect.