Why Are We Still Doing That? Positive Alternatives to Problematic Teaching Practices
The Intended Audience
This book is for teachers at all stages—novices, veterans, and everyone in between—as well as for teacher-prep candidates who will raise the next generation of world-changers. But most important, this book is for the children most affected by these practices.
Teachers, there are better ways. Let's use them, for the sake of our students and for our own peace of mind.
This book is for teachers at all stages—novices, veterans, and everyone in between—as well as for teacher-prep candidates who will raise the next generation of world-changers. But most important, this book is for the children most affected by these practices.
Teachers, there are better ways. Let's use them, for the sake of our students and for our own peace of mind.
The authors, Pérsida and Bill, have been in the field of education for 30 years. How long is 30 years? It's long enough to have watched school boards sheepishly back away from mandates requiring female teachers to wear pantyhose with their dresses and skirts. It's long enough to remember walking out of the teachers' lounge smelling like a pack of Marlboros. Thirty years is long enough to have seen educational trends come, go, and then come back around again. And it's long enough to have gained sufficient perspective to say that some things in education haven't changed a bit.
Authors: We've also been married for 30 years, and we work in the same university, in the same department, and in offices two doors down from each other. On our ride home in the evening, we'll talk about our day. Often, we talk about the amazing teachers with whom we work. And some days, after spending the morning pointing out the problems with ineffective or inadvertently damaging educational practices and the afternoon visiting schools where those very same practices are still alive and well, we'll say to each other, "Why are we still doing that?" In other words, why do instructional, assessment, and classroom management practices that we know to be counterproductive nevertheless stay in place year after year?
The answer we gravitate to is a simple one: old habits die hard, particularly when they are part of what Dylan Wiliam (2007) calls the unexamined "scripts" of schooling. Most teachers spend about 13,000 hours in the classroom as students before they graduate high school. That's a lot of hours soaking up habits that they will later consciously or unconsciously perpetuate, even after learning about best practices in college or university. "Teachers learn most of what they know about teaching before they are 18 years old," writes Wiliam. He continues:
In the same way that most of us learn what we know about parenting through being parented, teachers have internalized the "scripts" of school from when they themselves were students. Even the best 4-year teacher-education programs will find it hard to overcome the models of practice their future teachers learned in the 13 or 14 years they spend in school as students. (p. 196)
This book is about looking closely at those old scripts, seeing how they really play out today, and recommending many for retirement. We delve into familiar habits across the range of education practice (instruction, assessment, lesson design, and classroom management) that the research identifies as problematic and suggest positive alternatives that better support student growth.
A Critical Clarification
Pérsida used to be a telemarketer. Every Sunday night for more than a year, she'd find her stomach tied in knots at the prospect of another grueling workweek spent cold-calling unfriendly strangers. Even getting somewhat good at it didn't alleviate the worry; as anyone who's done it can attest, telemarketing is brutal work. But teaching is arguably harder—in a keep-you-up-at-night, never-forget-your-worst-mistakes kind of way. It's the type of work that can mess with your head. When Pérsida had a bad day as a telemarketer, she felt like a bad telemarketer; when she had a bad day as a teacher, she felt like a bad person. You can have 179 good days in a school year, but it's that one bad day that you'll remember forever: the day you lost your cool, or said something you wish you hadn't, or didn't speak up when you should have.
Before we begin to pick apart practices that you, reader, may have used or may still be using in the classroom, it's important to stress that we know how hard teaching is, and we know the special regret teachers feel when they think they have fallen short of the duty they owe to their students. This is not a book of chastisement or a book to be used as ammunition or for self-flagellation. We are not writing it to be critical of what you or your colleagues do.
If being perfect is the qualification for writing this book, we are certainly not qualified; many of the revelations you will read about were sparked by incidents in our own classrooms. But if learning from mistakes qualifies us to write this book, then we certainly hit the mark. Our goal was to write a book that we wish had existed when we were starting out as teachers. With that in mind, we have focused on explaining the problems associated with 16 established classroom practices. After we present the problems associated with these practices, we present better, easy-to-implement alternatives that meet the same, or similar, goals those practices are intended to achieve.
The Limitations of Research and the Rewards of Reflection
Although you will encounter research findings that support opposition to current persistent practices that "feel right" but actually undermine student learning, in some cases there is little direct data proving that something is a bad practice. Remember, much of what is studied in the field of education needs to be approved by a panel of reviewers whose sole purpose is to ensure high ethical standards. These academic research ethics committees ensure that participants are protected and that the research will not place subjects in positions of peril or risk. For example, universities have institutional review boards (IRBs) that must approve studies prior to the research being conducted. If they are doing their jobs, these review boards will prohibit a study from taking place if it seems likely to place children in the position of being the recipients of questionable practices. This is why you won't find studies that compare an experimental group subjected to a commonly agreed-upon "bad teaching practice" with a group that received "effective teaching." There are ethical boundaries that limit the type of research that can be conducted with students. That's a good thing, but it also presents challenges that can perpetuate ineffective and potentially harmful habits in K–12 classrooms that continue without clear and recent opposition.
We encourage you to talk about the topics in this book with trusted teacher friends, reflect on them together, and evaluate what is and is not working with your own students. We admit that we don't have every answer. You don't have to agree with every conclusion we come to, but please weigh the benefits against the costs when considering your own teaching practices. And, when appropriate, ask your students for input, using some of the simple student surveys included in this book. Students usually know what works and what doesn't; after all, they are living it. Give them opportunities to tell you. Listen to what they have to say.
Old Habits Die Hard
Old habits die hard, particularly when they are part of the unexamined norms of schooling. In Why Are We Still Doing That?, the best-selling authors of Total Participation Techniques lead a teacher-positive, empathetic inquiry into 16 common educational practices that can undermine student learning:
Round robin reading
Teaching to learning styles
Homework as the default
Using interim assessments as "formative assessments"
Asking, "Does everybody understand?"
Traditional Q&A
Data-driven everything
Publicly displayed data walls
Content breadth over depth
Adhering to rigid pacing guides
Teaching to test samplers
An analysis-only approach to reading
Elevating English language arts and mathematics over all other subjects
Ignoring curriculum experts
Using behavior charts
Withholding recess
Pérsida Himmele and William Himmele provide straightforward, research-informed accounts of what makes each of these practices problematic. And they share easy-to-implement instructional, assessment, and classroom management strategies you can use to meet the goals those problematic practices are intended to achieve . . . without the downsides or the damage.
This book is for K–12 teachers at all stages of their career, including preservice teachers who will be educating the next generation of students. Read it and reflect on it with colleagues. Use it to focus your own inquiry into what is and is not working for your students and to replace ineffective and potentially harmful habits with more positive and effective ones.
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