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A Sense of Urgency

I have a sticky note pinned to the corkboard in my office that says, “Keep it movin’.” I’m all about urgency in education: this is important, we have lots of learning to do, so let’s hurry up and get to it. I’m instinctually speedy, but that sense of urgency was also trained into me.  When I worked in Boston as a young teacher, I was taught to teach bell-to-bell, and that lost minutes of instruction add up. I was never introduced to the work of Doug Lemov or Teach Like a Champion 2.0 until I came to the Burlington School District, but the school where I worked in Boston was clearly influenced by the same principles. The systems and routines I was encouraged to develop were aimed at maximizing student time-on-task. Timers for specific activities and count-downs for transitions were part of this - both to keep my instruction tight, but also to, well, keep it movin’.  

So as I review the characteristics of a white supremacy culture that Tema Okun delineated as showing up in our schools and organizations, the one that hit me the hardest was a sense of urgency. I’ll admit that as an instructional coach, I have pushed urgency. I’ve seen many lessons that take too long to get started; the idle time results in student restlessness and leads to many having a hard time getting on-task. I encourage teachers to keep instructions short, crisp, and whenever possible, get right to the task.  In one of my 2019 blogposts, I recommended that teachers “use countdowns for transitions, to create a sense of urgency, while allowing for variation in how long it takes kids to start - or finish- something. 'We’ll get started in 3, 2, 1….' 'Return to your seats in 10, 9, 8'”. Is that the kind of urgency that characterizes a white supremacy culture? It’s time to take another look at all these recommendations.

Tema Okun’s descriptors of a sense of urgency and the antidotes she recommends seem to focus on the leadership level, which sometimes apply to classrooms but not always. That said, a “continued sense of urgency…makes it difficult to take time to be inclusive, encouraging… thoughtful decision-making, to think long-term, to consider consequences, or learn from mistakes.” So what about urgency in the classroom? How do we ensure that we are maximizing student learning, with opportunities to both teachers and students to be thoughtful and learn from mistakes? And how do we balance the tension between the finite time we have, while also, as Okun says, recognizing “that things take longer than anyone expects”, even, or perhaps especially, in a classroom? The last thing we want to do as teachers is plow through a lesson plan, or a unit plan, without regard for where students are, especially those students who have been most underserved by our schools in the past.

And what about timers and count-downs? At the beginning of this year, I made a commitment to thoughtfully review my past recommendations for teaching and learning, especially those that relied on the work of Doug Lemov and Teach Like a Champion 2.0. In “Work the Clock,” Lemov writes, “Measure time--your greatest resource as a teacher--intentionally, strategically, and often visibly to shape both you and your students’ experience.” In that section, he recommends precisely those strategies that I have long used and recommended for teachers: using timers for tasks like the Warm-up, and using countdowns for transitions. 

I asked Joe Truss for his thoughts on urgency in the classroom, and here’s what he said: 

“We always feel pressed for time, in life and at work. Therefore we look for ways to be efficient, work smarter and sometimes that means cutting corners. In the classroom, this urgency can lead to pressure on students to complete tasks, be compliant, or simply break under the pressure. We must challenge Lemov’s notion that “time is your greatest resource.” It’s not time. It’s relationships and connections. That is the true currency in the classroom, the wood that keeps the fire burning, and facilitates student learning. If we allow ourselves to center relationships with our students, we prioritize interest, inquiry, joy, learning, and all the things we signed up for. At times these are in direct opposition to the crunch of time, the number of standards, and a prescribed scope and sequence. Instead of buckling under this pressure of misalignment, we have to ask ourselves what truly matters, what will shift student learning, and how we can make choices to change outcomes for students. Of course time matters. But learning, relationships, and engagement matter much, much more.” 

I stand by my recommendation to use the routines of timers and count-downs, and to, watch the clock. But to Joe’s point, I offer this caveat:  we need to ensure that we’re not keeping it movin’ so fast that we don’t see or hear our students. That same Boston school where I learned many of the tools in my instructional bag embodied a belief that all school-based learning is predicated on students’ feeling connected, competent, and contributing. So yes, keep it movin’. But first, develop solid relationships and community of learners. Second, make sure each and every student has an access point in that lesson and that they can participate in the learning. If you're watching the clock, and you know your students, you can see in a given moment that it isn’t working for kids. Then it’s time to pause. Time isn’t the only thing we measure; we also measure engagement, learning and students' feelings of safety. And if your pacing isn’t resulting in the engagement, learning or sense of safety that you expect from each and every student,  you need to slow down. 

For Further Reading

Reflect, Learn, and Be an Anti-Racist Teacher

Starting the School Year with a Focus on Belonging

Last year, several BSD teachers, counselors, psychologists, and staff worked to create resources for teachers to focus on social emotional learning (SEL) and wellbeing during the first six weeks of school. Many of those resources can be found here, in the BSD SEL resource hub.

This comprehensive resource hub has activity suggestions for every grade level in order to intentionally build relationships with students that create a foundation for safe, supportive, and inclusive learning environments.

Here are a few resources you may find helpful as you build your own SEL toolkit:

• Inner Explorer (short audio-guided mindfulness exercises for transitions)
• Circle Scripts for Building SEL Skills
• Tier 1 Signature Practices (CASEL)
• Topic-Based Lesson Plans for SEL VT
• Daily Learning Dedications
• Along (digital reflection tool)
• 101 Inclusive Get-to-Know-You Questions for Students
• Greater Good in Education
• Adult Well-being Pulse Check

Free Professional Learning - Mini-Webinar

Check out these free educational webinars that are offered by The Transgender Training Institute

Some happen during the school day, but perhaps you're available.

• Celebrating Trans & Non-Binary Friends -Miniwebinar- 9/12/22, 2 - 2:30pm ET 
• Non-Binary Basics - Miniwebinar - 9/14/22, 3-3:30pm ET / 12-12:30pm PT
• Getting Comfortable with Pronouns - 9/14/22, 4-4:30pm ET/1-1:30pm PT
• Foundations: Beyond the Binary -10/12/22 3 - 4:30 PM ET | 12 - 1:30 PM PT
• Supporting Transgender Students Coming Out - 10/28/2022, 3:00 - 4:15 PM ET
• Gender Inclusion in Feminist Language -11/2/2022, 2:00 - 3:30 PM ET

Revisiting Teach Like a Champion

 As an instructional coach in a BSD middle school, I have intermittently blogged about teaching and learning. The gist is this: I choose a theme, summarize some of the experts’ findings, and provide a few specific strategies from the resources and/or my own experience that teachers can apply immediately. 

When I first became an instructional coach several years ago, I was given a copy of Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 2.0,  as was every teacher in my building. And I have relied heavily on it as a resource for both new and experienced teachers, when we’re looking to increase student engagement and learning in individual classrooms. My own copy is dog-earned, annotated, and full of sticky notes. I have frequently referred to, even quoted, excerpts of Teach Like a Champion in my blog posts; I have been a veritable peddler of many of the strategies it contains. 

Now I have a new role in the Teaching and Learning office for our district. Like all our middle and high school staff, I participated in a full-day launch of the professional learning that our district will center this year: anti-racist instructional practices and dismantling white supremacy culture. And so I’m taking a closer look at all of my practices through the lens of white supremacy culture.

I found the resource we were asked to read by Tema Okun to be particularly helpful in identifying the characteristics of a white supremacy culture and providing antidotes to mitigate the effects. And while I wasn’t completely surprised at the critique that Joe Truss, who is supporting our district in this work, made of Doug Lemov and Teach Like a Champion, I did feel it. As Sparks says, if you’re stomach ain’t churnin’ you’re not learnin’. The video excerpt that Joe chose from TLAC’s video bank sure did show some of the hallmarks of white supremacy culture: only one right way and “I’m the only one", to name a few. Joe argued, it seems, that the strategies I have actively promoted further entrench white supremacy culture in our schools. It gave me real pause; my stomach churned.

Part of me resisted, instinctively. Surely, there must be parts of Lemov’s work that are just plain good teaching. But I also know enough about that instinctive resistance to give it a careful look. And I know that others who have worked with me over the years are asking the same question. What about Teach Like a Champion? 

So I’m embarking on some self-study, going back through my old posts, the strategies I promoted, and looking carefully at them through the lens of dismantling white supremacy culture. I anticipate that I’ll discover some that show a need to learn and do better; I also anticipate finding some that I’ll continue to posit have legitimate pedagogical value. I commit to not fall prey to either or thinking and to check my own defensiveness about the work that I have loved. I hope you’ll join me. 

For Further Reading

Teach Like It's 1895

www.dismantlingracism.org