Coaching for Listening to, not Lecturing, Students
Apart from and alongside my teaching career, I have mentored a number of high school girls. Across diverse backgrounds, one of the major themes I heard from girls was that they felt like their parents and adults in their lives didn’t listen to them. Because of this, I’ve pledged to myself to try to be a parent who makes space to listen to my kids, no matter how old they are or what they have done.
However, I’ve found that my instinct is quite the opposite. I find myself often over-explaining and repeating myself when my kids do something wrong to “make sure they understand.” Instead of letting them talk or reflect on how they can grow from their mistakes, I end up explaining why something was wrong or how they can do better next time. In brief, I end up lecturing them instead of listening to them!
Like me, a lot of teachers are good at doing a lot of talking. We feel good at it. We feel like it's our job. We feel like we’re in control.
But we also know that learning doesn’t happen by passive listening. Students need to actively engage in speaking, creating, moving, solving, and building in order to learn.
Teachers have made leaps and bounds of progress in the last three decades with moving away from a lecture-only format towards including much more student voice: we do turn-and-talks, we do group work, and we differentiate. However, I still see the majority of teachers returning to teacher-center classrooms where they are doing the majority of the heavy lifting, thinking, and most noticeably, talking. In many classes across the country that I’ve observed in the last decade, teachers are doing the talking for more than 80% of the lesson.
Talking at students has long been our status quo of schooling. While we make some space for students to talk to a partner or in a group, that student talk time is often still on the teacher’s terms. It’s time to disrupt the status quo of lecturing students, and instead build classrooms and schools radically center students by deeply listening to students. This is one of ways we can build education that is experienced as mutual liberation (see my previous post called Education as Liberation).
Listening well to students engages them in owning both their behavior and content learning. And it’s a learning opportunity for teachers and leaders as well. By meaningfully listening to students AND responding to what they say, teachers can create more engaging, just, healing, and productive learning environments.
One major roadblock for teachers in shifting to listening to students more is the perception of and the clinging to their power in the classroom. In “behavior management” strategies, teachers are taught to maintain “control” of their students. I’ve encountered teachers who feel like because they are adults with degrees, they deserve the power they have in their role as a teacher. However, to really listen to students, teachers need to be willing to give up some of their power in the classroom. And they can do this well with your support as a coach or instructional leader.
5 Strategies for Instructional Leaders to Facilitate Listening to Students
Start with relationships. In order to support teachers in listening to students, we have to begin with the foundation of building positive and meaningful relationships. This goes for both the coach-teacher relationships, as well as teacher-student relationships. As a coach, make sure that you prioritize time in each coaching meeting and informally between sessions to connect with teachers around who they are outside of being a teacher. To support teachers in their connections with students, see my previous post on Coaching for Building Strong Student-Teacher Relationships.
Track classroom data on student voice. One of the most powerful tools to support teachers in listening to their students more is seeing data from their own classroom that points to the need to do so. During a classroom observation (or across several observations), track how much of the lesson you hear the teacher talking, and how much you hear students talking. Even track nuances about what kind of student voice you are hearing, such as just a handful of student volunteers or all students engaging deeply simultaneously. Then, share this data (visually if possible) with your teacher, and ask them to identify trends, what impact this data may have on student learning, and goals for how they’d like to grow. This data should be a launch point to practical strategies or changes in their classrooms to incorporate more opportunities to hear students.
Support teachers in creating and sustaining cogens to inform their instruction. One of the most powerful strategies that I’ve seen to really listen to students to inform instruction and content is Chris Emdin’s cogenerative dialogues, or cogens. In a cogen, a teacher invites a small group of about four students that represent a diverse cross section of the room to provide informal feedback about how the class is going and to set one actionable thing they’d like to see improved. This is a tool not only for building trust and listening, but also building student leadership opportunities. Check out Dr. Emdin’s book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too for step-by-step guidelines on how to set up a cogen.
Support teachers in restorative practices. While the cogen is a strong strategy to listen to students about instruction, supporting teachers in building strong restorative practices, including restorative circles, creates space for teachers to listen to students about student behavior and engagement. Check out Edutopia’s step-by-step guide on Building Community with Restorative Circles.
Discuss the power shift with teachers. Intentionally include conversations about power in your coaching meetings. Who holds power in the classroom, and why? What is a productive vision for who holds power in the classroom and how can we work towards that. Consider sharing an excerpt from Learning for Justice’s Reframing Classroom Management toolkit to read and discuss. Conversations about power should be included as we discuss how we listen to students, but they should also be ongoing conversations throughout the coaching partnership.
To close, take a moment to reflect on this quote from Street Data, by Shane Safir & Jamila Dugan:
“We need to confess, admit, acknowledge, and own our racial bias and the racism baked into our institutions. This means listening deeply to students and families, even (or especially!) when their voices are hard to hear. Student voices are incontrovertible. We can’t dismiss, deny, quantify, or rationalize away the voices and experiences of children at the margins. Allow them to be truthtellers and moral compasses for what you say you believe about equity, but learn to listen deeply without boomeranging into past practice.”
Now, let’s go collaboratively build more spaces where students feel seen and heard in school!