Master teachers, when mentoring their newest crop, always zoom in on the power of reading and reacting to the energy levels of the classroom. As a teacher, you have a great deal of control over the students’ energy levels. When it’s low, it’s a good idea to get students to move around and do group activities. When it’s too high, the best action is to dim one light and have students write independently.
A single day of this reading in action was so memorable that it ingrained this lesson in me forever.
As students were walking into their math readiness class at Claremont High, my master teacher noticed one of the tall, grungy-haired boys was carrying a ping pong paddle and a ball. She challenged him to a game. If he won, the class would play a game instead of completing the lesson for the day and they would have no homework. If she won, the class would continue like normal.
Every student was on board, as shown by how they rearranged two desks into a pseudo-table and cleared the chairs in less than a minute. The gap between the desks marked an invisible net line. All of us, save the teacher and student, crowded around to see the action play by play. Both players showed a high level of skill; my master teacher was proving her talent. It was a race to see who would get to five points first. At the end of it, the teacher lost by a single point! The kids rejoiced and for the rest of the period they played a math review game- the classic one where teams of students compete to solve the most problems correctly.
After the class ended, my master teacher came up to me and said, “If you want to know why I did that, it was because I wanted to bring these students some joy into their lives. Since I know them so personally, I know they’ve been dealing with a lot lately, like multiple deaths and illnesses. I lost on purpose, but I wanted them to feel like they had earned that time. And because we played the math review game, they were still learning for the day.”
As a teacher, it is important to get a sense of the room, have a bag of on-the-spot teaching strategies, and be able to adjust your day as needed.
