Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

and build on them from there.
    And remember, start small but, above all, start.

Chapter 28
Your classroom is not just an environment in which you can show how clever you are
    One of the best ways in which you can be an inspirational teacher is to give the children in your care the opportunity to be inspirational themselves. So says my Independent Thinking Associate and friend Will Ryan, pioneer of
Inside Out Leadership
– the idea that you lead a school from your own moral purpose, not from what the latest government directive tells you to do. How often, though, have I seen the classroom as the place not so much where children shine but where teachers perform.
    But, let me reiterate – in a learning school your job isn’t to teach the stuff, your job is to ensure that your children learn the stuff.
    I was once working with – or at least trying to work with – a group of A-level psychology students but every time I put a question to them, their class teacher answered it. And in great detail. Her classroom was her domain and no-one would know more, contribute more or speak more than she would. She taught A-level psychology but I’m not sure what her students learned. They certainly didn’t learn to find their own voice as independent learners. But, as Lord Chesterfield wrote in one of his famous letters to his son in the eighteenth century:
    If, therefore, you would avoid the accusation of pedantry on one hand, or the suspicion of ignorance on the other, abstain from learned ostentation. Speak the language of the company that you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other. Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o’clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.
    (The Project Gutenberg EBook of Quotes and Images From Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son, by The Earl of Chesterfield. Available at: www.gutenberg.org/files/7539/7539-h/7539-h.htm )
    One of the most inspiring books on teaching and learning that I have ever read is
Super Teaching
by American educationalist Eric Jensen. In it he describes a range of approaches to teaching by the ‘high ego’ teacher. The list includes:
    • Wanting to let students know when they make a mistake
    • Wanting students to remember you at the end of the year
    • Wanting to be right about something in debate or discussion
    • Hoping students will like you and think highly of you
    • Having it be important to look smart, witty or charming
    • Making students wrong for forgetting something
    • Keeping things the same, protecting status quo.
    (Jensen 1995)
    How many of the above are you guilty of? I can see a few that strike a chord with me I must say! There are, of course, times where you need to be up at the front, rallying the troops as it were, but learning to grab their attention is one thing. Knowing when to let it go again is another. Psychologists have a phrase for the way our attention works. They call it ‘in-out listening’. You can’t be outside your head, listening to the pearls of wisdom from a teacher and inside your head trying to make sense of them at the same time. You are in one place or another. This is why we advocate ‘not teaching’ as an important strategy for helping children learn. Sometimes there is so much teaching going on there is no space for them to learn anything. One of my favourite teaching strategies was shared with me by a friend who taught in an FE college in Cornwall. He used to set his group up with a task and then nip to the loo for ten minutes with a good book!
    How much do you talk in your lessons, for example? Remember, you don’t get any extra points for talking when the whistle goes. Play the game where you ask the students to time your ‘teacher talk’ and then see how your guess at how long you think you spoke for matches with the actual length of time you did speak. You will be surprised. Another colleague of mine, Jim Smith, author of
The Lazy Teacher’s Handbook
, describes how he plays a game with his sixth formers where he limits his initial teacher talk time at the beginning of a lesson to a set number of minutes or a set number of words. His students then monitor what he is saying to ensure that he doesn’t go over his time or word quota. This way the baton is soon passed to the