Getting students to talk in class
The first in a series of posts about the problem plaguing teachers everywhere.
At an education conference yesterday, I sat with a group of fellow teachers during the morning session, and we all nodded at a comment about how difficult it is to get students to talk in class “these days.”
Since Covid, this is one of the top complaints I have heard from teachers from grade school through college. On a personal level, class discussions had always been a strength of mine as a teacher and my favorite thing to do. Until Covid.
With resolve to refresh my practice, I reached out to Dan Fouts. Dan and his twin brother, Steve have taken a method from their classrooms to create Teach Different. A stunningly simple model, it involves sharing a meaningful quote with students, figuring out what the author of the quote is saying (the claim), the counter argument to the quote (counterclaim) and concluding with larger “essential questions” raised by the quote.
The objective is to engage a group of people (classrooms, community groups, etc.) in a meaningful discussion, making connections to issues, personal life and each other.
Recently, I was featured as a guest on Teach Different’s Podcast. (Yes, shameless self promotion). The featured quotation was by the scientist Marie Curie.
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” - Marie Curie
On the podcast, Dan, Steve and I unpacked the quotation and generally just had a great time talking about Big Ideas. The Teach Different method starts with big ideas, and then it’s up to conversation leaders — whether in a school setting or elsewhere— to take it from there. What an awesome way to engage kids in some of the big ideas that come out of a specific topic in a history class.
I might have chosen this quotation to start a unit on the Great Depression. But what I appreciated most about about our discussion was how this one quotation got us started making connections to so many things— the pandemic, the election, global warming, student worries about academic failure, racism, immigration, football, parenting. At the end of the day, what is supposed to go on in a classroom is THINKING. We were thinking. We were making connections.
A few days earlier, when I watched Dan lead a discussion in his high school classroom, I saw the same thing: students making connections and thinking. It was gratifying to see so many students participating.
The quotation Dan used was from Winston Churchill and was chosen to set up a lesson on the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which resulted from the failures of the Articles of Confederation.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
I teach U.S. history. Dan teaches government. While we teach these subjects because there are specific things we want our students to know and be able to do, we also teach because we want our students to experience the joy of learning.
The Great Depression, the Articles of Confederation and the creating of the U.S. Constitution are topics we surely want our students to know about. But maybe before we can learn about those things, we should be exposed to big ideas about big things— things that connect to the daily lives our students live so they begin to see the world beyond themselves. The opportunity to grapple with big ideas helps us answer the number one question that ALL students have on a daily basis in every one of their classes:
Why do we have to know this stuff?
When they’re not explicitly asking the question, students are still wondering it. But when they are actively engaged in a good classroom discussion— when they seize on the ideas of other students, when they get to “argue” with a quotation from a wise and famous person like Marie Curie or Winston Churchill and their thoughts are validated by other students— the question becomes irrelevant for the time being. They don’t need an answer because what they are doing feels worthwhile.
After our podcast recording ended, I continued thinking about the quotation and making more connections. I thought about how fear can lead to authoritarianism, conspiracy theories and other scary stuff. Perhaps we need to teach students how authoritarianism preys on fear? It reminded me of an earlier podcast on Teach Different on an Albert Einstein quote, “Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” And that one reminded me of a quote I like by broadcaster Edward R. Morrow: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” Would it be a leap to suggest that students who don’t think, who don’t have knowledge, who don’t understand will become like sheep and simply follow others?
That is a heavy thought…and an inspiration for a future post. For now I’ll conclude by going back to Churchill’s quote on the courage to continue.
It is still September, early in the school year. There are lots of opportunities to get our students talking and thinking. And if one approach or one lesson fails, there is always the next period, the next class. It’s worth the fight.