Guiding Students to Think Like a Teacher

Subject specialists in secondary education are reluctantly aware that most of our students will not study our favorite subject beyond high school. They may, after all, have chosen the subject for reasons of requirement or parental expectation, rather than intrinsic interest. This makes it important to use the subjects we teach as vehicles for developing the collaborative, cognitive, and communicative skills they will need to succeed as they move into higher education or work.

One way to increase student engagement and build these skills is to prepare students for the task of collaboratively planning, researching, and delivering part of a lesson. This can be particularly effective for optional elements of a subject syllabus, like the theme-based courses that have no prescribed content, such as the AP Seminar and Research courses, allowing real-world examples or the students’ interests to serve as provocations for learning.

Whatever agency we give our students often needs to be introduced, modeled, and practiced. Even in the most progressive schools, students might wait to be told what to do or be led into learning. Schooling can have the effect of disempowering students through some of its routines that exist for administrative ease rather than student outcomes. Ironically, students learn how to be ”good students” rather than good learners. The following approach helps them become both.

The First Steps

I start with an audit of what students know, believe, or have seen that causes learning, and I collect their ideas and observations. In this way, we build a map of action together, a set of actions that lead to an outcome (learning) that serves as a participatory and reflective guide for both them and me. This becomes an artifact around which to facilitate a discussion, in groups or as a whole, about what we know is needed for learning and what causes learning when those needs are met.

In setting up the audit and leading the discussion, make sure that the students are thinking not only about what their teachers do, but also about what they say, how they behave, how they make decisions, and what they choose to focus on as teachable moments. Invite the students to remember the most impactful teachers and lessons from grade school and what it was about them that led to their learning.

In this way, it’s possible to use their audit to take the class on a journey of educational approaches. Show them what their audit includes that has been recognized by Abraham Maslow, John Hattie, and Dylan Wiliam—Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (feeling safe enough to share ideas), some of Hattie’s key effect sizes of various strategies on learning (class discussion or thinking routines, for example), and Wiliam’s strategies for using assessment for learning (answering with a question, making sure they know what to do next). It’s possible to move from the specific what works for me to the general what supports learning for us in about an hour to build the foundation for what comes next. 

The time put into growing this metacognitive understanding is an investment that will begin to pay off as you utilize those teachable moments later in the year and the students become aware of what you are doing and why.

Putting it together

Following the discussion, and with the shared record of their audit and map of action at hand, it’s time to distribute the sections of curriculum documents, syllabus, and course guides to the students for the topic or unit they will deliver.

I’ve found that this is best done in small chunks—many of the documents that we work with as teachers are daunting to students, and a page or two is enough for the class to work with. This is an opportunity for them to read and see what we use to plan their lessons, as well as to see what captures their interest from the material you want them to explore and have a go at teaching; you will need to make sure that they cover enough of the concepts and content between them.

Working in pairs or threes that they choose, then in pairs or threes that come together around what they will teach, students can start developing ideas about how they will deliver their lesson segment. Bring them back to their own audit of what works and causes learning, because this is what they need to weave their content into. Another lesson of 45 minutes to an hour should be enough for this part of the process.

Put the groups in the calendar for the upcoming weeks, taking volunteers to go first and second. Timing of 15 to 20 minutes works well, but more time will be needed if their task includes a class discussion. Leave 10 minutes between segments for feedback if you are going to include two or three lesson segments in a row.

Having tried this activity many times over the years, I’ve found that the emergent pattern seems to be this: Give a real-world example as an introduction, state a key question or concept, lead a task or activity to engage with this question or concept, reflect on the task, close with a piece of summary or statement writing to have a record of learning. 

Before the first group presents their lesson segment, bring the class together to remind them all that this is the equivalent of leading a presentation with elements of improvisation, audience participation, and heckling, all while trying to cause thinking, practice skills, and drive learning… the stuff teachers do every day. It’s something that, like everything else, improves with practice.

Delivering the lesson segment

Now’s the time for the students to present their lesson segment. It’s your job, and the job of their peers, to be the willing participants in the class, to listen to each other and be ready to give feedback on one thing you liked and one thing that could have improved, using a specific example. 

Don’t forget that all the students should be making notes or a record of this—it’s the lesson! After their presentation, the students should share their work, slides, and any materials for the task with everyone in the class for reference and for your assessment and feedback.

Every time I hand the teaching over to a class in this way, I wonder why I don’t do it more often, though more than twice in one year with the same class loses a little energy because it is challenging work and it takes time. It is, however, well worth the effort, and the clear, effective communication and quality feedback they give each other throughout the course reflects the impact that teaching has on all of us, as well as their newfound respect for the craft—that’s real learning.