The Tangent
Posted: February 13th, 2012 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 4 Comments »
Ellen Guiney convened a group a few years back. It was called Boston Schoolchildrens Consortium. She got the heads of Boston Public Schools, the Catholic Schools, independent schools, pilot schools, a couple charter reps, etc. We talked and got to know each other. We visited a few schools together.
One was very successful Jesuit high school. Most kids were from well-off families, though there were many scholarship kids, too. I remember an English lesson. A couple of my colleagues loved it. The kids were so engaged. Kept peppering Teacher with questions. Excitement.
But I thought Teacher was pinned. All the questions were tangents. The first couple were authentic. But tangents begat tangents. By middle of class, the kids were running a four-corner offense, stalling via questions designed to keep the teacher from moving through the topic at hand.
Caleb Dolan explores this topic on his blog.
In many of my lessons plunging down the rabbit hole sounded something like this:
Me: Now that you have seen these examples what’s the difference between erosion and weathering?
Student A: Weathering is when rocks and objects are broken down and erosion is when they get carried away.
Me: That’s close but we need a few more pieces in that explanation.
Student B waves both hands in the air full of excitement drawing the teacher in like the Death Star.
Student B: I was watching the Weather Channel and they said there’s more extreme weather now. What’s that?
Me: Naturally excited by the genuine curiosity about content dives in. Two-three minutes later after an impassioned, entirely verbal explanation of the difference between hurricanes, typhoons, and tsunamis as well as global warming and the politicization of the climate debate I realize that this may be off topic and that momentum is spilling out of the lesson like flour from a ripped bag.
I close with the most cursory and useless checks for understanding.
Caleb advises that often the right choice is to Just Say No. But how? He gives some ideas. One is:
Develop systems that allow you or the kids to follow up on their curious and tangential questions. Lots of science teachers have questions jars for the slew of gloriously questions kids ask in almost any science class. The jar is the easy part; the hard part is knowing what to do with the jar. Our high school bio teacher instead has kids put these questions on post its on a classroom window where he can respond. This celebrates curiosity and allows lessons to stay on track. I would love to hear about other successful systems for this.
Any other ideas?
Read the whole thing here.
The graphic is the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen on a webpage and that includes ones from the 90s with horrible “music” and blinking puppy graphics.
Please, please don’t do that again!
[Taking a day or two a month to set the kids researching and then presenting answers to the gathered questions for a grade seems like a good way to combine tangent questions, with research, summarizing, writing and/or presenting skills practice. Might also be a good activity for a sub day, as long as the procedures for researching were easily spelled out and followed.]
We tried to institute a “parking lot” this year, but it was an epic fail. I always say, “Write it down and ask me after class.” When they actually do, it means it was important.
This, by the way, is the trap I fell into in my first year of teaching science and it continues to be a battle. You want to honor interesting questions and clarify science, but you also need to stay on point.
Yeah, I think mathteacher has the gist of it: it’s a battle, and it’s easy to fall into the wormhole. I would add only that you should pay attention to the types of questions students are asking. They’re not always stalling, and sometimes their questions reveal fundamental ideas you want to try and find a way to address more formally later. When I started to notice patterns of questions I used that as inspiration for a future lesson.
I’m thinking about this in the context of working with beginning teachers. The tangent can be deadly, but is easy enough to fix by talking about objective-driven lessons and aim alignment.
The bigger struggle is getting teachers to stop taking too many on-topic questions. It can be just as much of a drain on the pace and momentum of the class – and a bore for a majority of students. But training teachers when enough is enough – just let the students get to work and check-in individually for outstanding questions – can be a challenge.