Implementing a student-centered instructional approach that can be customised to fit a variety of teaching styles is easier said than done.
In my book Teach More, Hover Less, I discuss a four-stage, “hover-free” approach that empowers a shift away from classroom micro-management.
The following excerpt encourages teachers to embark upon the self-reflective process of examining their own mindset around teaching and learning so that a classroom of shared responsibility and collaboration becomes a reality.
From micro-management to trust
Does our teaching require lock-step compliance? Or does it promote the academic freedom that comes with critical thinking? The more we can steer instruction toward the latter and away from helicopter teaching, the better we are able to examine outdated priorities around the urgency of due dates and focus instead on learning objectives.
We will also create a classroom structure that is far less stressful for ourselves. A struggling language arts teacher I coached arrived at a key aspect of creating a successful hands-off classroom: showing belief in students by letting them take control over a portion of the class.
We decided that the teacher would experiment with daily thought-provoking or engaging writing activators at the start of class. Students would have the opportunity to jot down ideas for a few minutes and then share their thoughts for as long as they liked.
If the prompt was “write about your name without stopping for six minutes”, the teacher would open the floor, sit back, and see what happened. If the conversation veered off track, she would let it happen. If the discussion lasted for the entire instructional period, that was fine. If students were hesitant to verbally share their ideas, she would provide some low-risk alternatives (such as writing one thought in the chat box), but she would not push harder to achieve her own idea of a successful outcome. In short, the teacher would take a few steps back, listen to her students, and see what results that lack of interference yielded.
The through line that holds steady in a hover-free teaching approach is trust. Whether that translates into teachers trusting their students to be equal partners in the classroom community, students trusting that their teachers believe in them, or everyone trusting a process that relies on a lessening of controlling behaviour, it is the underlying trust that allows us to shift our mindset away from micro-management.
One simple example of a classroom product that reflects this mutual trust is the daily agenda. Typically, teachers build the itinerary for each day and present it to students at the start of a class. In our pursuit of clarity and structure, a traditional class agenda lacks student ownership.
Suppose that instead of delivering an agenda each day as a fixed element, we took some time toward the end of class to work on pieces of that plan together with our students? So if my plan for the day involved learning about key events in the Roaring ‘20s and we had only just begun to discuss Prohibition, I could show students a partly filled-out agenda for the next day and ask some questions, such as:
- Where should we put our continuation of this learning?
- What elements of Prohibition should we focus on?
- Is there an activity we could do to explore this topic more, either on your own or in groups?
As students shared their learning preferences we could sketch out the plan together, increasing mutual trust and decreasing any micro-management on my part. Of course, I would still control some pieces of the agenda – after all, I am the teacher. However, I would have sent a message to students that their contributions matter and that they control aspects of the process.
As we begin shift our mindset away from micro-management and toward trust, we may also wish to become more attuned to possible indicators of helicopter teaching. The list of “look-fors” which follows is a starting point...
I might be a micro-manager if...
- I plan each part of my class down to the minute – and I never stray from that plan.
- I have a tendency to overplan my classes; we always have too much to do.
- I panic about getting through the curriculum.
- Overall, my students learn quietly. I dislike a lot of commotion.
- If I do not watch my students, they tend to veer off-task.
- As much as students enjoy a fun activity or unstructured learning time, it always goes off the rails.
- I teach bell to bell. We begin the minute the bell rings and I do not stop until it is time to leave.
- Of all the seating arrangements, I prefer teaching in rows to lessen noise/distraction.
- Differentiation is nearly impossible. It sounds nice, but it doesn’t work.
- I plan lessons on evenings and weekends, and sometimes I am only about a week ahead of the game.
- I love my students, but they do not take responsibility for their work.
- I try to be absent rarely because my students need me to be with them.
- Teaching is exhausting and it feels like a constant survival game.
- Unless I run a tight ship, my students take advantage of me.
While these “look-fors” are phrased in a way that is more absolute or extreme than is realistic for many of us, they still point to characteristics that are often inherent in teacher mindsets.
To use this list, we should go through each item and check off any indicator that contains some degree of truth. When we are finished, if we have even five boxes checked off, that may set off a few tinkling bells. If we have checked more than half, those bells should probably be considered enormous Liberty Bell-sized clangs of warning.
While it might be tempting to tackle the list in its entirety, it is important to undergo the process of addressing our mindset incrementally. One deceptively complex question to begin with is: How do we really feel about our students?
To quote renowned educator Rita Pierson: “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” Beyond that, they don’t learn from people who discourage their independence, show little trust, and try to think for them.
Similarly, teachers who feel burdened to do all the work for students rarely have time and space to reflect upon their own practice. Even if early attempts to step back from micro-management are met with dubious results, keep trying and students will eventually understand that they are being given the opportunity to influence their learning space, whether that happens in a classroom or beyond.
We may also want to pay attention to how a gradual release of helicoptering affects both teaching methodology and inner wellbeing. In the case of the language arts teacher, she spent two weeks prioritising a student-led writing activity and discussion at the start of each class. Gradually, as the students got to know one another better in their new virtual spaces, the overall atmosphere of the class improved, and the teacher was able to accomplish more with the group as she moved through the stages of creating a hands-off learning environment, starting with a mindset shift.
- Miriam Plotinsky is an instructional specialist with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, USA, and the author of Teach More, Hover Less: How to stop micromanaging your secondary classroom. This article is an edited excerpt from the book used with permission of the publisher W. W. Norton & Company. For details, visit http://miriamplotinsky.com and https://bit.ly/3cHeILC