One reason I still love this blog is that, after years of teaching, I still stumble on new insights as I write. This post will not apply to many teachers, but for those who are being mashed in the garbage compactor of increasing governmental and bureaucratic requirements, my thoughts may prove useful.

From a post a few days back:

During the day, frontload the most important part of any lessons for the first 25 minutes of their class period/time block. Attention spans vary. If you want a rigorous new math concept to make the journey to long-term memory, introduce and practice the concept when students are fresh. Later in the period, you can add necessary reinforcement. Even in the later afternoon, those first few minutes of a math, English or history period tend to be the golden minutes, windows of opportunity.

The above idea of frontloading important instruction almost assumes whole group instruction. In our time of furious grouping, that instruction may never happen. Classroom timing gets put on the backburner as we plan how to cycle our kids through the latest common lesson plan.

Let’s say I have set up the day so that Group 1 will work on the math program on the Chromebooks, Group 2 will work on the new concept for the day, and Group 3 will work together on vocabulary. Every 20 minutes or so, the groups change. After the first change, Group 1 now gets the day’s new concept. After the second change, Group 3 finally gets to the new concept during the last third of the hour. Group 2 got the best of my time, those first minutes of the hour. Group 3 ended up with the dregs, at the end when some members are likely getting antsy and watching the clock, waiting for the bell.

I vividly remember when my then-Assistant Superintendent said, “We no longer do whole group instruction.” Every teacher in my school was expected to be grouping the whole time, managing groups and transitions, I think because the Assistant Superintendent was trying to show off his familiarity with educational fashions. Actually, I have no idea what he was thinking or where he had found that carafe of Kool-Aid he chugged.

Instead of doing what happens to be in fashion, though, we ought to do what works. If I have a class where not a single student knows a new concept,*  then whole group instruction will likely be my best strategy. In terms of using my best, early minutes wisely, whole-group instruction will also be my best move, depending on the material under consideration. As I write this, I can think of caveats and exceptions to what I wrote. I can think of those because I AM THE TEACHER. I have spent time with the students I am teaching. I know what my students don’t know. I know where reinforcement will be needed.

As a teacher, I also know that mandatory, non-stop grouping can impede education, as we lose our best minutes getting groups underway when we ought to be learning new ideas. Fashions sometimes trump flexibility and common sense.

Tip #26.75 or something like that:  Hang on to your golden minutes at the front of the hour. If I had this one to do over, I would have taken much less “advice.” I would have taken the common lesson and given it in a Google Doc to the computer group, a hand-out to the vocabulary group and in person to whatever lucky group had me first. Then I would have had everybody track what I was saying and doing. If admin had walked in, I would still have been able to show off my groups while doing covert whole-group instruction.

In order not to be caught doing this whole-group instruction, I suggest you have the computer group add notes to their Google Docs or PowerPoints, while having the vocabulary group highlight problematic words. Then you can use that material to launch your next lesson.

Eduhonesty:  Don’t lose your first minutes because somebody, somewhere, who has not been a classroom for years, has a brainstorm that sucks up those minutes. The kids come first. But direct opposition hardly ever benefits a teacher. How can you make it work and still give the appearance of going with the program? How can you follow directives and yet mitigate the damage? That’s your challenge. Fortunately, I don’t know any group of people anywhere who are better at thinking on their feet than teachers.

Because this post was built around a specific situation, I can see its content getting lost in the many pieces of advice on education. I hope readers will hear the thrum of an underlying theme here. Outside interference with classroom pedagogy keeps worsening. Not all outside advice should be regarded as useful. If you are a new teacher trying a new technique and that technique appears not to be working, I suggest going with your gut, not the research. Many study results end up being broadly applied despite the fact that their good results required a low student to teacher ratio combined with paraprofessionals and extra assistance from resource teachers. If you don’t have that paraprofessional or those resource teachers, please don’t doubt yourself because your students don’t look like the kids in the video they showed you.

*I should not have this class, but as we pick Common Core materials based on test-expectations rather than prior learning, this student/material mismatch happens too often.