Entertaining Odd Ideas
By Peter LloydThe list of qualities and accomplishments that do not make an effective teacher may surprise you, because it includes things you might expect a teacher to have. What does make a good teacher takes a little more time to explain, but it includes respect for unusual ideas and wrong answers.
Education consultant and author Doug Lemov, a former teacher and principal, conducted his own research into what makes an effective teacher. He did so after learning that high SAT scores, graduate-school degrees, passing teacher-certification exams on the first try, an extroverted personality, courtesy, confidence, warmth, and enthusiasm do not ensure a teacher’s success in the classroom.
The most reliable predictor, it turns out, is an art—the art of classroom management. Some teachers seem to come into it naturally. You know who they are—the few teachers who truly inspired you. They practiced the art of classroom management before Lemov and others identified it. I write about this art, because it champions the entertainment of off-the-wall ideas, even when they are wrong.
In “Building a Better Teacher,” Elizabeth Brown serves up a fascinating classroom exchange between a student and teacher. It illustrates the purpose of welcoming wrong answers.
A boy named Sean explains to his teacher why he thinks the number six could be considered an odd as well as an even number. Instead of snapping, “Sit down, Sean, that’s ridiculous!” the teacher asks other students what they think of Sean’s idea. Together the class works out precise definitions of odd and even. And with Sean in agreement, they conclude that a number cannot be both odd and even. Then they go a step further, define a new type of number, and coin it the Sean Number.
For the students this exchange of ideas surpasses every other type of instruction. They literally taught themselves. By doing so, they not only learned the properties of odds and evens, they learned how to figure out these kinds of principles for themselves. They also practiced collaborative problem solving, a skill that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.
Most of the students in this story, especially Sean, will never forget the ins and outs of odds and evens or the esoteric concept of a Sean Number. In this fact lies the crux of classroom management: It matters less what a teacher knows, more what the students know. It’s all about their point of view. Always.
Brown sums up Lemov’s definition of classroom management as, “an exercise in purpose, not in power.”
Purpose over power leads to creative success as well. Creative people work better when they focus on solving the problem over who will get credit for the solution. What’s on the table over who put it there. With such a focus, they have less reason to reject and more reason to entertain eccentric notions. It makes them more willing to offer the germ of an unpolished idea. And we all know that the wildest ideas contain the greatest potential.
Purpose over power might even serve one well along all the avenues of life.
Read Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.