Small Teaching Moves with Outsize Impact
(Originally titled “What You Practice Is What
You Value”)
In
this Educational Leadership article,
Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Uncommon Schools) says that for novice teachers, being
coached on seemingly minor points – for example, standing still and facing the
class when asking students to stop talking and come back together at the end of
a turn-and-talk – can be transformational. But for this kind of coaching to
work, a school needs a culture that includes a shared language of effective
pedagogy and a norm of frequent, low-stakes feedback and practice. “In
effective cultures,” says Bambrick-Santoyo, “people use words everyone can
understand to describe actions that committed members consistently put into
practice.”
Over
a period of years, he and his colleagues have compiled a list of teaching
behaviors that are granular, observable, and high-leverage. These are skills
each of which can be learned within a week, produce immediate improvements in
classroom dynamics and student learning, and accelerate what is often a
painfully slow learning curve for novice educators. “Rather than wait for years
of trial-and-error experience to perfect their craft,” says Bambrick-Santoyo,
“new teachers can actually grow quickly, step by step.” Picking up the pace is
a moral imperative, he believes; students can’t afford to wait for incremental
improvement in teaching, especially in high-need schools with a large
proportion of rookie teachers.
Below
are some of the action steps in Bambrick-Santoyo’s “Get Better Faster”
playbook. They parallel the kinds of small, easy-to-learn-and-practice skills
that musicians and athletes learn with their coaches as they rapidly improve
performance:
