Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching

Robyn R. Jackson

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781416626527
• eBook ISBN: 9781416626558
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

Some great teachers are born, but most are self-made. And the way to make yourself a great teacher is to learn to think and act like one.

In this updated second edition of the best-selling Never Work Harder Than Your Students, Robyn R. Jackson reaffirms that every teacher can become a master teacher. The secret is not a specific strategy or technique, nor it is endless hours of prep time. It's developing a master teacher mindset—rigorously applying seven principles to your teaching until they become your automatic response:

• Start where you students are.
• Know where your students are going.
• Expect to get your students there.
• Support your students along the way.
• Use feedback to help you and your students get better.
• Focus on quality rather than quantity.
• Never work harder than your students.

In her conversational and candid style, Jackson explains the mastery principles and how to start using them to guide planning, instruction, assessment, and classroom management. She answers questions, shares stories from her own practice and work with other teachers, and provides all-new, empowering advice on navigating external evaluation. There's even a self-assessment to help you identify your current levels of mastery and take control of your own practice.

Teaching is hard work, and great teaching means doing the right kind of hard work: the kind that pays off. Join tens of thousands of teachers around the world who have embarked on their journeys toward mastery. Discover for yourself the difference that Jackson's principles will make in your classroom and for your students.

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Chapter 1

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Start Where Your Students Are

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All learners construct knowledge from an inner scaffolding of their individual and social experiences, emotions, will, aptitudes, beliefs, values, self-awareness, purpose, and more. In other words, if you are learning in a classroom, what you understand is determined by how you understand things, who you are, and what you already know as much as by what is covered, and how and by whom it is delivered.

Peter Senge, Schools That Learn

I was teaching an on-level class of 11th grade students. The students who were quiet, polite, obedient, and respectful were my favorites, regardless of how they performed in the class. They were what I considered "good students."

Keisha, on the other hand, was not what I considered a good student. She was loud and disrespectful. Her work, when she turned it in, was sloppy. She came to class late and rarely had anything to contribute to the discussion. At first, I tried to believe in her. I encouraged her and told her, "You can do it." I gave her extensions on her assignments and invited her to come in at lunch for extra help. I did my best to treat her as if she had great potential.

But, to be honest, I didn't see any potential in her and I was getting tired of trying. Every day in class was a battle. I'd ask her to take out her pencil and get to work, and she'd cross her arms and stare out the window. Some days, I would push it, cajole or order her to do her work, and the exchange would erupt into a battle. Many days, things got so bad that I would end up sending her to the office. Other days, I hate to admit, I just didn't feel like fighting. If she wanted to fail, I wasn't going to get in her way.

One day, in the midst of one of our battles, she yelled, "I hate you!" And, to be honest, I couldn't stand her either.

It had come to that.

I realize now that because I had difficulty handling Keisha, I looked at her in terms of her deficits rather than her strengths. She did not fit my image of a good student, so I expected her to fail. More important, because I had difficulty reaching her, I blamed her. If I were really honest, I didn't like Keisha because she didn't swoon over my lessons. I had worked hard on those lessons and was working very hard to teach her what I thought was a valuable skill. After all the work I'd done, she sat there with her head on her desk. Surely there must be something wrong with her.

One day, I was complaining about Keisha to Cynthia, one of her other teachers. We both commiserated about her terrible attitude and how hard it was to get her to work. As we talked, I slowly began to realize that although we both had the same view of Keisha and the same challenges with Keisha, we had different results. Keisha did work in Cynthia's class. In fact, Keisha was currently earning a B.

"You know that child is brilliant, don't you?" Cynthia commented.

"Yeah," I snorted. "She's so brilliant that she's failing my class."

Cynthia got serious. "I mean it, Robyn. That girl is brilliant."

I looked at Cynthia incredulously. "Brilliant? Are you kidding me? She doesn't do work in class. She just sits there during discussions. And the papers she turns in are full of grammatical errors." I was starting to get upset.

"None of that has anything to do with how smart she is," Cynthia replied calmly.

"Of course it does," I began. Then I stopped. Cynthia's words began to sink in.

"Have you ever had a conversation with Keisha?" Cynthia asked.

I shook my head adamantly. "How can I have a conversation with her? She is completely unreasonable. She fights me at every turn."

"Yes. That child can be pretty stubborn and ornery," Cynthia agreed. "But you really should try to get to know her."

"Cynthia, I have 130 students. I don't have weeks to spend trying to get to know each one personally. Besides, how does learning her favorite TV show or her favorite band help me get her to do her work?"

"You don't have to take her out to lunch or invite her home for the weekend, you know," Cynthia said, amused. "I am just saying that you need to look beyond how mean or inappropriate or stubborn she is being and pay attention to who she is and what she wants. Keisha acts out because she doesn't have a more appropriate way of getting what she wants. But if you can get beyond that, you will find that she writes really good poetry, and she can out-argue anyone. She has a really good mind. You just have to show her how to use her powers for good instead of evil." Cynthia winked at me.

I thought about what Cynthia said. We had the same student, but we saw her in entirely different ways. How was Cynthia able to see beyond Keisha's attitude and uncover her other abilities? And, more important, if Keisha really was as brilliant as Cynthia said she was, why wasn't I seeing it in my classroom?

Common Practice

We all at some time or another have come across a student or two whom we felt we just couldn't reach. In some cases, we've even come up against an entire classroom of students who seemed unmotivated and incapable of learning no matter how hard we try, and we struggle all year to find a way in.

Many textbooks and teacher preparation programs argue that the way in is to get to know your students. They suggest that you do a battery of pre-assessments and getting-to-know-you exercises. Although these can be useful, they are not sufficient. Students have their own experiences and therefore present their attributes and abilities in different ways. If you only pre-assess and play getting-to-know-you games, you may be ignoring other powerful components of who they are.

Some teachers recognize that getting-to-know-you exercises are not enough to really understand who students are. They realize that students' cultural backgrounds are also powerful influences on how they learn. Many school systems understand at least superficially the power of culture and therefore require their teachers to take a class on cultural competence. But these classes often amount to little more than heroes, holidays, and "foods of the world" classes where teachers spend six weeks eating their way to an understanding of culture.

The problem with this approach is that it treats culture as if it were a monolithic thing that can be reduced to a list of characteristics and preferences. And it assumes that our students have only one culture when, in fact, our students—all of us, for that matter—are members of several cultures. There is their racial or ethnic culture (e.g., Latino, African American, Asian), their regional culture (e.g., Southerner, urbanite, Californian, Midwesterner), their religious culture (e.g., Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish), their social culture (e.g., athlete, rebel, nerd, theater kid), and their generational culture. If we spent time trying to understand all the cultural influences that make our students who they are, we would never have time to teach. And even if we went through the trouble of learning all of the preferences and characteristics of our students' various cultures, how would we use that knowledge to motivate our students or help them learn?

It is undeniable that students' choices and learning preferences are influenced by their various cultures. But rather than focus on learning superficial information about students or even learning the common attributes of their cultures, it is more important to understand the concept of intellectual and cultural currency; how it is acquired, negotiated, and traded in the classroom; and how you can marshal its power to help students learn.

The Principle

Knowing your students means more than knowing their demographics or test scores. It means recognizing what currency they have and value and then using that currency to help them acquire the capital of the classroom.

The capital of our classrooms is the knowledge and skills that lead to high achievement. It includes both content knowledge, like the concept of whole numbers and the effect of the Magna Carta on modern government, and procedural knowledge, like how to add and divide whole numbers or how to write a five-paragraph essay. When students acquire classroom capital, they do well on achievement tests and make good grades. Classroom capital is what we typically associate with intelligence.

However, simply knowing the facts does not ensure success for most students. Several researchers (Polanyi, 1958/2015; Sternberg et al., 2000) suggest that academic success is not based solely on knowing the right answers; it is also based on an entire subset of "tacit knowledge" or "soft skills" that make acquiring the right answers easier. In order to do well on a test, for instance, you need to know more than just the information being tested; you also need to know how to take notes, how to read the text, how to study effectively, how to distinguish what information is important, how to answer multiple-choice questions, how to eliminate incorrect answers and make educated guesses when you do not know the answer, and how to pace yourself so that you can complete the test in the time allotted. You might need to know how to ask the teacher for help on the information you did not understand, how to identify what it is that you do not know, how to get the notes from another student if you are absent, how to conduct independent research, or how to allot enough time to study.

These soft skills operate as a form of currency in the classroom. In fact, any behavior that students use to acquire the knowledge and skills important to your grade level or subject area functions as currency, and this currency is actively negotiated and traded in every classroom interaction. Although these soft skills and behaviors are not often made explicit to students, they are crucial in acquiring the capital of the classroom.

We all have preferences for styles of behavior, communication, and relationships. We all have notions of what is worth knowing. These preferences are what we use to impart value to the currencies we use and accept in the classroom. If students behave in a way that we value—if they head their papers properly, for example, or come in for extra help, if they raise their hands before speaking and refrain from talking during the lecture—they are more likely to receive favorable treatment, extra help, high expectations, and access to opportunities. As a result, they are more likely to learn. If students do not have these currencies, they have a much more difficult time acquiring the capital of the classroom.

We all have preferred forms of currency. Suppose you advertise that your house is for sale and I come take a look. I like what I see and declare that I want to buy your house. "Great," you say as you take out the paperwork and prepare to draw up a contract. Meanwhile, I dig into my pocket, pull out a few shiny beads, some seashells, and a couple of wood carvings, place them on the table, and ask for the keys. How would you react?

What if I told you that in my culture, shiny beads were of tremendous value, the wood carvings were of a sacred nature, and the seashells were our accepted currency? Would you then accept them as a form of payment for your house?

The same type of exchange happens in classrooms each day. We have capital (knowledge and skills) that we are trying to help our students acquire. Our students have various currencies (knowledge and behaviors) that they bring with them and attempt to use in order to acquire the capital of the classroom. Often, however, there is a disconnect between the currency we value and the currency they are spending. Or our students do carry the currency recognized in the classroom but refuse to spend it because they do not find the classroom capital particularly valuable.

This disconnect is to be expected. Just by virtue of being adults, we have preferences for behavior and notions of what is valuable that differ from our students' sense of what is valuable. The trouble comes when we see this disconnect as a sign that our students are somehow deficient because they have currencies and values that are different from our own.

Just because students come to us with alternate forms of intellectual and cultural currency does not mean that they are less capable. It means that they have skills that may be unrecognized in the classroom context and potential that has yet to be developed. Or it might mean that they do not yet see enough value in classroom capital to expend the effort it takes to acquire it. Rather than see them as deficient, we should reshape our approach to instruction so that we capitalize on students' currencies rather than overriding or negating them.

Practicing the Principle

Ultimately, if we want students to be successful in our courses, we have to help them use their currencies to acquire classroom capital. In order to do so, we must first figure out what currencies we are accepting and what currencies our students are spending. Next, we have to determine whether there is a disconnect between the two. If there is, we need to figure out why that disconnect is occurring. There are two possible explanations. One, the disconnect is occurring because students do not have the currencies we are accepting in the classroom. If that is the case, we need to help students acquire this currency. The other explanation is that students have the currency but refuse to spend it. In this case, we have to help them value the capital of the classroom.

Understand What Currencies You Are Accepting in the Classroom

Most classroom problems have at their root a disconnect between the teacher's preferred form of currency and the students'. Thus, while it is important to understand and respect the students' currencies, you must also understand and respect your own.

As much as we may try, we cannot escape who we are. We have values we bring into the classroom. These values will come across in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, so it is important that you are just as observant of yourself as you are of your students. Ask yourself how your values affect the way that you see your students and your role in their lives. Examine how the way you teach is affected by the way you were taught, and develop an awareness of how all of this plays out in the way that you understand your students and the lens through which you see every interaction that takes place in the classroom.

Beliefs and values drive behavior. They have a direct consequence on what we teach, how we teach, and why we teach. Yet how often do we take time to examine our own beliefs and values? If we are going to help students use their currencies to acquire the capital of the classroom, we must first examine our own beliefs about what is acceptable in the classroom, about what makes a "good student," and about what constitutes learning.

Try This

• Divide a piece of paper into two columns. On one side, list the behaviors and characteristics of your ideal student. What would that student look like? What would that student know? What would that student do? (For example, your ideal student might be one who is neatly dressed, comes to class on time, raises his or her hand before speaking, completes the homework nightly, participates actively during classroom discussions, and knows how to read critically.) This list will help you see what currencies you value. Next, place an asterisk next to each characteristic that is necessary in order to master the objectives of your course or grade level. On the other side, list the characteristics, behaviors, and values of the students in your class. What do your students look like? How do they behave? What do they value? Compare your lists to see what currencies your students are spending and what currencies you value. Where are the similarities? Where is the disconnect? How many of the starred characteristics do your students have already? What can you do to help your students acquire the starred characteristics they don't have already?
• Pay attention to the metaphors you use about teaching. Do you see teaching as gardening, or coaching, or shaping students, or lea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Start Where Your Students Are
• Chapter 2. Know Where Your Students Are Going
• Chapter 3. Expect to Get Your Students There
• Chapter 4. Support Your Students
• Chapter 5. Use Effective Feedback
• Chapter 6. Focus on Quality, Not Quantity
• Chapter 7. Never Work Harder Than Your Students
• Chapter 8. Taking Control Over Your Own Practice
• Chapter 9. Putting It All Together
• Appendix
• References
• Study Guide
• Related ASCD Resources
• About the Author
• Copyright