The InterActive Classroom

Practical Strategies for Involving Students in the Learning Process

Ron Nash

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781544377711
• eBook ISBN: 9781544394053
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

Shift Students' Roles from Passive Observers to Active Participants.

Preparing students for a world that did not exist when they were students themselves can be challenging for many teachers. Engaging students, particularly disinterested ones, in the learning process is no easy task, especially when easy access to information is at an all-time high.  
How then do educators simultaneously ensure knowledge acquisition and engagement? 

Ron Nash encourages teachers to embrace an interactive classroom by rethinking their role as information givers. The Interactive Classroom provides a framework for how to influence the learning process and increase student participation by sharing
• Proven strategies for improving presentation and facilitation skills
• Kinesthetic, interpersonal, and classroom management methods
• Brain-based teaching strategies that promote active learning
• Project-based learning and formative assessment techniques that promote a robust learning environment

Intended to cultivate an interactive classroom in which students take an active role in learning, this book provides a blueprint for educators seeking to amplify student engagement while imparting critical twenty-first century skills.

1 The Tinkerer’s Mindset

In Built to Last (2002), Jim Collins and Jerry Porras relate how Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard (HP) “kept tinkering, persisting, trying, and experimenting until they figured out how to build an innovative company that would express their core values and earn a sustained reputation for great products” (p. 29). Companies that are dedicated not only to great products but to exceptional customer service plant themselves in the public consciousness as entities that stand out and stand above everyone else. And they keep moving forward.

A visitor who walks through a school’s front doors can draw a good many inferences concerning the state of customer service from the way he or she is greeted in the foyer and in the school office. The adults who inhabit great schools go out of their way to welcome visitors as they exhibit all the hallmarks of outstanding customer service. And even a brief walk-through with a building administrator can provide plenty of observational feedback concerning how teachers and students interact with and treat each other. A single glance through the window in a classroom door can tell an observer much about whether or not students are attendees or participants. Body language can be deafening.

For more than a decade, I coached teachers in hundreds of classrooms at all grade levels, and the most effective among them demonstrated in the classroom and in conversations with me that they loved working with—and being with—kids. The language they used inside and outside the classroom was the language of learning, not the language of compliance and control. The truly extraordinary teachers with whom I conferenced spoke to me of their plans, things they couldn’t wait to try, a journal article that had given them a great idea or two, and risks they had taken that had paid off—or not. To a person, those teachers operated every day in the rich context of the growth mindset.

A growth mindset is not, according to Frey, Hattie, and Fisher (2018), “a state of being—it is a coping skill one chooses (or chooses not) to draw on in the face of challenge” (p. 52). Easy or familiar tasks that don’t challenge us don’t require this skill; we engage a growth mindset when we try something new, something different, or something potentially difficult, believing it is in the best interests of those whom we serve. Tinkering with something over and over again can expose us to failure, too, and that is a good thing. Challenges bring inevitable risks for great companies and great teachers, yet mistakes and unforced errors are necessary components of the improvement cycle.

The great teachers I have had the pleasure of observing over the course of many decades have vision; they are inspirational and aspirational role models for the students they serve, and they fully understand what they want to accomplish with and for them. Building powerful and supportive relationships with students is job one. They work to create a culture of learning, thinking, doing, experimenting, evaluating, and redoing. And they work every day to engage their students in the learning process. Learning is not a spectator sport. Learning is up close and personal. Everyone in a learner-centered classroom is a learning partner, and the chief learning partner seeks constantly to tinker, persist, and experiment in support of continuous improvement.

Learning is not a spectator sport.

This is not to say that those teachers and their students don’t encounter obstacles on the continuous-improvement highway. They do, and many of them have shared with me and with their students personal and professional stories of mistakes and unforced errors. But they share with a smile or a healthy dose of laughter; self-confidence and resilience are hallmarks of their success. Two important components of resilience, according to Brooks and Goldstein (2004), include the ability to set realistic goals and expectations and to learn from both success and failure. Understanding where they want to go and being perfectly capable of seeing success and failure as opportunities for growth, great teachers, like first-rate companies, never stop moving inexorably toward worthwhile goals.

Pay It Forward

Piling into a couple of school district vans many years ago, a large group of administrators and lead teachers from Virginia Beach traveled to the Craven County School District in North Carolina. We were there for 2 days, observing classrooms at every level and talking with the superintendent and his staff, all of whom took the time to have an extended lunch with us. After a lunch provided by them, they shared what they were doing in their pursuit of quality, then took our questions. When we got back home, I called the principal of the elementary school where we had spent all of the second morning. I asked if he would be willing to allow a couple of his teachers to come to Virginia Beach at our expense to present to a group of administrators. The principal came himself. He brought his assistant principal. He brought six of his finest teachers, and we had a great morning with scores of our own administrators.

Let me pause for a moment and underline this. For an entire day, both building administrators and six excellent teachers were out of the building, seeking to help spread the message and inspire others in a school district other than their own (and in another state). In return, the principal asked only for a small contribution to their reading program. He, his assistant principal, and six of his teachers drove more than 3 hours and stayed overnight to make that happen for us.

In January of 2019, I accompanied dozens of Corwin authors and consultants as we visited Health Sciences High and Middle College (HSHMC), an outstanding school in the poorest, most crowded section of San Diego. With a 98%-plus graduation rate, this school provides internships for students in local hospitals. Classrooms are highly interactive places filled with students who love being there. One eighth grader told me she and her friends appreciated being treated like adults and provided with assistance at every turn. Not surprisingly, a regular influx of daily visitors flocks to a school that gladly and proudly shares who they are and what they have been able to accomplish in the 12 years since its founding.

In nearly 5 decades in education, I have never failed to notice that high-performing teachers, administrators, and schools are perfectly willing to share with others the reasons for their success. They don’t lock it all away, hide it under the back stairwell, or otherwise conspire to keep it a secret. They understand that continuous improvement is—and should be—a collaborative effort, not a competitive one. Education is not a zero-sum game, where I win and you must, therefore, lose. Success—along with the mistakes, unforced errors, and failures that made it possible—should be valued, celebrated, and shared with anyone willing to experiment and do some serious tinkering on behalf of children.

Education is not a zero-sum game, where I win and you must, therefore, lose.

Some Reflections on Reflecting

High-performing teachers are self-reflective. Looking at how they are doing what they are doing has become second nature. It is not a chore, nor is it something to be avoided. Improving one’s performance and relevant skill sets takes time, “as well as effort, energy, and practice,” write Hall and Simeral (2017). It is a “deliberate, intentional, strategic approach that signifies the importance of the key ingredient for excellence: a healthy dose of self-reflection” (p. 20). Reflection becomes the habit that keeps on giving: “The more reflective we are, the more effective we are,” affirm Hall and Simeral (p. 21, italics in the original).

Reflecting on our practice reveals for us what is working and what needs to be adjusted, reconstructed from the bottom up, or simply discarded. When caught up in the whirlwind of multiple classroom projects and deadlines, self-imposed and otherwise, serious reflection may have to wait for calmer waters. This is where a reflective log can come in handy.

An elementary teacher once showed me her dog-eared notebook, filled with thoughts, ideas, questions, doodles, ruminations, humorous stories, and other categories too numerous to mention. I keep a reflective log on my computer when writing a manuscript or getting ready for a presentation. I’ll get up in the middle of the night to write down something I will otherwise forget by morning.

Tactical Tips

Consider keeping a single file on the desktop of your computer, one you can easily and quickly access to add reflections on today’s lessons or experiences in a reflective log. Date the entries, and revisit them when you have—or can make—time. Many were the occasions I thought of something I wanted to try or wanted to save for further reflection that simply disappeared because I was unwilling to take the time to capture it for later retrieval. A reflective log can be a powerful continuous-improvement tool for busy teachers and administrators.

What I Did With My Summer Vacation

Driving around town during the summer as a newly minted teacher almost 50 years ago, I would have noticed kids running, playing, socializing, laughing, and taking in a good deal of sunshine in a way that was remarkably familiar to me. Not that many years before, my friends and I would have gathered at one of several beaches on the southern shore of Lake Erie during a heat wave. A winter snowfall served as the clarion call for kids to build snow forts, play a game or two of snow football in someone’s backyard, or simply pelt each other with snowballs. We were, as you may have guessed, outside more than we were inside for most of the year.

Participating in myriad neighborhood games and activities together, we worked our way through inevitable disagreements and other problems on our own, without adult supervision. And, although we did not know it then, our downtime, as Tony Wagner points out in Abeles and Rubenstein (2015), wasn’t downtime at all. It was uptime. “It’s in these unstructured moments that children develop essential capacities for reflective thought, creativity, social skills, and self-control.” All this downtime on the part of humans, as it turns out, is “essential for healthy psychological functioning” (p. 48). For teachers, summer downtime can be uptime, with a morning or afternoon set aside for the purpose of reflecting on the just-ended school year. This investment of time can pay considerable dividends when school gets under way in August.

For teachers, summer downtime can be uptime, with a morning or afternoon set aside for the purpose of reflecting on the just-ended school year.

In my early days as a teacher, I could have turned a good portion of my summer downtime into professional uptime, had I spent even a few days prior to the first week back reflecting on the ghosts of lessons past, evaluating assessments I would no doubt pull out of the drawer in due time, or exploring the best way to use primary sources in my history classroom. There are a great many things on which I could have chosen to reflect—but didn’t. By not understanding the past, with a nod to George Santayana, my students and I were condemned to repeat it.

The interactive classroom can be a vibrant and productive place for teachers and students alike, but it does not just happen. A great deal of preparation is necessary if students are to feel safe sharing their thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Establishing procedures and routines, researching structures for communication, providing consistently high expectations, approaching discipline issues with the right mindset, providing clear instructions and directions, and building rapport and trust are all necessary to make it possible for effective and meaningful interactions to succeed.

Teachers planning for the upcoming school year (and worrying in advance about student misbehavior) can take heart in Tate’s (2007) observation that any teacher’s “best line of defense against behavior problems is that teacher’s ability to actively engage students in meaningful and relevant lessons” (p. xiv). During the summer, questions can be raised and grappled with concerning topics like formative assessment, student collaboration, effective classroom questioning, sources of effective feedback, building relationships with students, and/or how teachers can create a culture of learning. Trying to cover the waterfront with effective teaching practices would certainly be a bridge too far, but reflecting on how to improve in one of those areas would no doubt pay dividends once the school year begins.

In my early years in the classroom, I never asked myself why I was doing what I was doing. I operated in a world of when and how much. When should I show that filmstrip? How much time should I spend lecturing on the causes of the Civil War? When should I give that summative test, and how long should I make it? My contact with the other ninth-grade U.S. history teacher was limited to various social occasions and to asking him, “Where are you in the book?”

In my early years in the classroom, I never asked myself why I was doing what I was doing.

Getting Better at Getting Better

Continuous improvement is a journey, not a destination, and feedback and constant reflection are essential companions for the trip. Valuable feedback can be obtained from students and on a regular basis. California history teacher Shelly Carson, among other continuous-improvement tools, uses something called a plus/delta (+/Δ). On the plus side of a large chart, students are asked to record one thing that went really well during this past month. On the delta side of the chart, they list things that could be done to make things go better.

When Jenkins (2008) asked one of Carson’s students if the plus/delta was worth doing. She replied, “Yes, because Mrs. Carson makes at least one change each month based on what we say” (p. 58). That simple, inexpensive form of feedback from her students give Carson a great deal on which to reflect. Moreover, the students knew she used their feedback, and that is important. If students are going to take the time to provide feedback in this manner, they want to know the teacher is really listening.

“The key to individual reflective practice,” assert Hall and Simeral (2015), “is setting aside periods of time devoted to improving one’s performance in the classroom. “Growth in your ability to think, reason, consider, weigh, ponder, assess, deliberate, reflect, and act on that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Unique Features of this Book
• Introduction
• 1 The Tinkerer’s Mindset
• 2 Some Assembly Required
• 3 Incorporating Structured Conversations
• 4 Managing Movement in the Classroom
• 5 Presenting With Confidence
• 6 Let’s Be Clear
• 7 Making Time to Write
• 8 Using Music to Facilitate Process
• 9 Unlocking Doors With Storytelling
• 10 Accelerating Progress
• 11 Behind the Seen
• Notes
• References
• Index
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