Re-thinking prep time

One aspect of teaching that I’ve come to appreciate more and more as the year has gone on is the importance of being deliberate. Partly deliberation goes hand in hand with preparation, but I was never one of those people who thought teachers just showed up for class having done minimal prep, especially if they were experienced. I didn’t come into this craft expecting a 35-hour work week.

But I don’t think I understood the extent to which a teacher clearly has to know where they want the class to go, the exact steps they intend to take to get students there and, finally, how the teacher will know if the students did indeed get the lesson.

The reality, as I’ve been thinking lately about lessons this year that have failed and ones that have succeeded, is more complex and comes down to deliberateness. That’s not code for teacher as dispenser of all knowledge. Rather, to use an analogy from my old life as a magazine and website editor, it's the difference between preparing for a meeting and preparing for a presentation.

It wasn’t like I prepared for one and winged the other. But the goals were different and, thus, so was the preparation. When i’d prepare for a meeting of my own staff or one that involved different departments, I knew the result I intended: nail down the assignments for the next issue, say, or gain support for the investment in digital expertise that we needed to make. I would craft an agenda, certainly, and had a strong idea of where I wanted the result to come out. But I would spend the bulk of prep time on a) readying myself for the give and take of debate: What if the editors want to greenlight this story that I think isn’t ready? What if the finance guys say there’s no way your return on investment justifies the head count you want to add? And b) figuring out what my compromise position would be. What was the minimum result of the meeting that would be acceptable? If I can convince the finance folks to fund half the investment, or get one of them to commit to work with me to present a plan to their bosses in 30 days, those are acceptable outcomes.

In contrast, when prepping for a presentation I knew exactly what I wanted the participants to walk away knowing, I had a script spelled out on index cards, I had timing down, and while I tended to deliver presentations in an informal style, that informality was honed. I left time for detours and encouraged interruption, certainly, but I knew where I was headed and, with my main points seared into my brain (and jotted down on index cards) I was comfortable I could get the show back on track and make the necessary modest adjustments to the timetable.

In part, I suspect, because as a student you don’t really see the script a good teacher is using and aren’t aware of how a process of discovery is being directed (and you are aware when a boring teacher is using a script), I had a notion at the beginning of the year that a good class, while it had elements of meeting and presentation, leaned a bit more toward the former. A teacher set the agenda and crafted exercises and assessments but what happened during those exercises or in discussion couldn’t be scripted. I would react, as in a meeting, to what was being said.

Over the course of the year I’ve come around to thinking that this approach makes for too many lessons that end up in disarray or in mush. The two classes I have in mind were a debate among my ninth graders about raising the minimum wage and a recent poetry analysis class in my eleventh grade.

In the former, I let the kids pick their sides and ended up with three of the four most argumentative kids on one side of the debate and two who barely speak on the same side. I made a similar mistake in not using a timer and written requirements for participation as a way to maintain order in a neutral way, without having to insert myself into the debate, which then makes it seem to both sides that I had a finger on the scale in favor of the other side. An egg timer and 10 minutes more thought beforehand would have eliminated a lot of problems, but I had convinced myself that the better approach was to give general structure and then let debate “flow.” Instead I ended up arguing with kids in an attempt to keep us on track, which was decidedly not the point.

On the other hand, when recently I broke up my juniors into group work for poetry analysis and was quite deliberate in picking participants for groups and the poems those groups read, the result was better than I expected. Engagement was better based on the challenge each group faced, I believe, then if I had aimed for a poem “in the middle.” And I was better able to direct my attention to the groups that needed it. I could allow groups that were capable of a more free-flowing discussion to have at it while helping the other groups stay on track even as I employed a tone that was far more relaxed than the one I have when I’m trying to keep the whole class on point.

I suspect that as I gain experience I’ll revisit my thinking many times about how best to prepare and will learn how to vary that approach. Lately, though, I’ve been jotting on index cards or scribbling notes and specific directions in the margins of an exercise I will hand out and feel like that exercise is helping me to be more effective in getting a class to reach understanding.