Yesterday’s APC meeting opened with a TED video featuring Ramsey Masallam entitled “3 Rules to Spark Learning”. Appropriately enough, Masallam gives his three rules that he abides by when planning lessons:
- Curiosity comes first,
- Embrace the mess;
- Practice reflection.
While I wish this message had come earlier in his TED Talk, Masallam’s three rules resonated with me and inspired my post for today. [If you’d like to see the video, I embedded it at the bottom of the page.] I can relate to this teacher, and he was able to put into words what I feel is completely necessary when planning each and every lesson.
Curiosity comes first: Yes, I understand that we have curriculum to finish, and in public schools this is almost more important than in independent schools because districts often plan each day’s information for the teacher. No matter how mired we get in the day-to-day “business” of school, we have to remember that we are in our classrooms to create thinkers. Our job as teachers is not to feed our students facts; it is to enrich their minds so that they can use their creativity to make change. We are responsible for developing the minds of inventors, innovators, and peace-makers. What use is knowing the year the Duke of Normandy took England (1066, by the way) if our kids can’t analyze the causes and effects of his actions. That skill of analysis is transferable, while knowing the importance of the year 1066 will probably only help them if they’re ever on Jeopardy.
When your students ask you questions, please, I implore you, answer them. I was in the middle of a lesson on Magna Carta when my students began asking me about the history of the Roman Catholic Church, prompted by learning that the Pope cancelled all masses in England for eight years because of King John. I didn’t finish my lesson, but I fed my students’ curiosity. Pausing my lesson and keeping them interested is worth so much more than checking off a lesson on my “to-teach” list.
Embrace the mess: My classroom always looks like an explosion occurred inside. When I pass back student work, the students joke about how many pens I must have used because I write so much on their papers. I encourage my students to cross out on their tests and quizzes when they come up with a new thought (they hate the mess it makes on their papers and don’t understand why I like this!) Masallam said that learning is messy, and he couldn’t be more right. In order to learn and grow you have to be able to experiment, create and make mistakes. Though my students are very uncomfortable with mistakes, as evidenced by their anger at my forcing them to write in ink and cross out when they want to make changes, it is my goal to encourage them to grow by trying and sometimes failing. I model this as much as possible myself. I always tell them when I’m trying something new in a lesson and at the end I ask for their feedback. By mid-year they’re comfortable being honest about what was good during my class and where I can improve. By helping me, they’re also seeing an example of someone who takes risks for the sake of learning and is okay with making mistakes.
Practice reflection: Thinking about our teaching is the only way to make it better. After every lesson, I write on Post-Its about what I liked and what I didn’t like about that lesson. Sometimes I do this for an entire unit. Then I take the Post-It and stick it to that lesson so that when I come to it the following year, I remember my thoughts and can improve. Reflection also keeps us from getting bored and becoming stagnant. I can’t imagine anything worse than an endless cycle of the same lessons year after year. It would be like in that movie Groundhog Day, but the cycle never ends. Reflection is our redemption from monotony.
Following Masallam’s rules is not only good for our students, but it is good for us. The better we are at our craft, the more our students will learn and will want to learn from us. Remember always: teaching is an art. It is refined by good practice and the more we practice to improve, the more our audience will get from it.