The Choreography of My Classroom
When I first started teaching, I always felt like I was racing against the clock. As soon as our mathematics block started, I had exactly 65 minutes to teach the lesson. I had a lot of anxiety as I followed the scripted curriculum, trying to complete it all before I had to transition to another content area. Not surprisingly, the lessons never went as scripted; my students never answered the way they did in the Teacher’s Guide.
As much as I tried to reinforce taking turns and raising their hands to speak, many students just blurted out answers. In fact, the more I clung to the scripted structure, the more stressed I became, and the less effective I was as a teacher. Instead of actively listening to what my students were saying, I was continually trying to get them to say exactly as it was written in the Teacher’s Guide. When I met with my colleagues to plan and discuss our lessons, they were on schedule. My teammates somehow got their students to follow right along with the script, pacing the lessons perfectly with our allotted instructional time. It didn’t matter if I was teaching mathematics or reading or science, I always felt that I was behind my teammates.
As I gained experience, I learned about lesson frameworks and instructional models. There were hook exercises, the 5E Model of Instruction, Project-Based Learning, Inquiry-Based Learning, learning goals and outcomes, workshop models, and Backward Design. No wonder teachers follow scripted curricula? The alternative is to have a deep understanding of learning theory, an authentic connection with their students, being responsive to their needs, and a strong foundation in pedagogy.
It took me years of learning the content, improving my pedagogical practice, and slowly moving away from curriculum guides before I began to feel comfortable teaching.1 As my comfort grew, I began noticing a pattern: when I planned using a curriculum map, I defaulted to the lesson plans that outline “fun” learning activities. When my students inevitably got bored, I either (a) blamed them for not appreciating the amount of planning that went into a particular lesson; or (b) added some “game” or craft or other edtech tool. The problem with this mindset is that it disregards the dynamic nature of learning. When I put away my curriculum maps, I noticed my students more; I saw them as actual human beings. I became more responsive to their academic, social, and emotional needs as people, not as data points to manipulate.
In his book, Culturally responsive education in the classroom, Dr. Stembridge identifies five planning questions that consistently support a process for creating classroom experiences that are engaging, rigorous, and culturally responsive:
What do I want students to understand?
What do I want students to feel?
What are the targets for rigor?
What are the indicators of engagement?
What are the opportunities to be responsive?
Dr. Stembridge’s planning questions encourage me to create a more holistic learning experience that involves the students’ emotions and engagement. They also force me to plan for opportunities to be culturally responsive. Dr. Adeyemi Stembridge explains that masterful teachers “choreograph rigorous and engaging learning experiences that draw richly on students’ strengths and identities by building upon their assets” (119)2.
The Dance
With my nose out of the curriculum guide (and more experience with the dynamism of a public school classroom) I have become more attuned to the feeling of learning and engagement. Understanding how my students learn allows me to position myself in a way that maximizes my impact. Instead of standing at the front of the room and pushing through activities, I stand with my students in the center of the classroom. Decentering myself frames our learning experiences as a collaborative effort. Instead of me delivering content to my students, we explore concepts together. I do not stand still, but move freely about the room. I kneel next to my students and speak with them, not at them. Moving and teaching in this way helps me feel the synergy of teaching and learning. My free-flowing classroom, where students are working independently or collaboratively in small groups, can become unwieldy at times, but I wouldn’t trade it for the alternative default: Initiate, Respond, Evaluate.
One of the best ways to see this decentering is to film a classroom in action. Last week, I decided to record our math3 and writing learning experiences4 (see above), and my literacy block of time (see below).5 If it’s too fast, you can adjust the playback speed by clicking on the three stacked dots in the lower right-hand corner of the video.
When I showed my own teenage children the videos, my daughter’s immediate response was, No wonder you’re so exhausted when you come home from school. Indeed!
Aside from the fact that I am on my feet all day (as most teachers are), I find it interesting how easily I lose my location in the classroom. Since I’m not authoritatively standing at the front of the room lecturing the entire time, I appear to blend in with our learning environment. Sometimes, I’m sitting next to students providing some additional support, and other times, I’ve inserted myself with a small group, asking clarifying questions. When I do address the entire class, I am rarely at the front whiteboard unless I am illustrating a particular point. More often, I am teaching theater-in-the-round style. To use a ballroom dancing term, my Line of Dance is complex and changes directions based on the needs of my students. My syncopation is often improvised as our learning experiences progress.
In these moments of collective flow, there is a tingle in the air; the atmosphere is charged. I feel like I am dancing through the classroom.6 An interaction with one student leads to another with a nearby group. There are moments when I look up and can feel the buzz of students working together, or helping their nearby peers.
Our learning experiences are more than a collection of banal learning activities. Once I know what I want my student to understand, and how I want them to feel, I begin to choreograph my learning experiences using a much simpler framework from IDEOU.
My learning experiences are iterative movements through See, Try, Share, and Reflect. At the beginning, I frame the experience by explaining the why, what, and how of the big idea concept, often an essential question. As quickly as possible, I get my students practicing and wrestling with that concept. I want them to try it out for themselves through repeated practice loops. Next, I get my students sharing their thinking with each other. Student collaboration and discussion promote deep understanding and are essential elements of an engaging learning experience. Having a structure for social learning is one of the best ways I have found to ensure that my students are able to continually collaborate across a variety of topics, problems, and content areas. Finally, I give my students ample opportunities to reflect and make connections to what they are learning. I find that this structure is a more organic process that allows me to be more responsive to my students’ academic needs.
Do I still go over time? Absolutely. Learning takes time and when we are in a collective flow state, we often lose track of the time. If there is one thing that age and experience have taught me is that there will never be enough time to cover all of the academic content, but there is always enough time for what matters. Students produce better quality work when they are not forced to work in siloed blocks of time. I find that my instructional activities are more rigorous when I am open to cross-curricular learning. For example, when I teach my students how to read grade-level texts closely, annotating, discussing, and making connections to what we are studying in science or history, time opens up. When I favor quality over quantity, I no longer get stressed if we don’t get to Lesson #43 in the workbook. The important thing is that students are learning and enjoying the beautiful and messy process. Once students know the basic steps of my classroom, I get to choreograph learning experiences that meet my students where they are and push them to grow socially and academically.
Have a great week!
— Adrian
Resources
How To Structure a 100 Minute Class Period
This article is written for middle-grade math teachers who have longer blocks of time with their students. I found Noelle Pickering’s classroom structure interesting. She has a combination of cooperative learning and skill building. Maneuvering the Middle has some great resources for math teachers!
If you haven’t already listened to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speak about his Flow Theory, this TED Talk is a perfect introduction.
I use cooperative learning roles frequently. There are a ton of different roles you can assign to students, but I find that it is best to keep it simple and randomize them (and their groups) every time. The last thing you want to do is waste time trying to create the perfect group. It doesn’t exist and students need practice working with a variety of different people.
I’m not a dance teacher, but I do frequently dance in my classroom. I love impromptu dance parties! However, I never realized how important the arts are for helping students learn academic concepts. This TED Talk is great!
As a young teacher, desperate to watch how other teachers teach, I loved The Teaching Channel. The idea is simple, film teachers teaching and share them with other teachers. In this video, teacher Leah Coleman discusses how she choreographs the movement of her third-grade classroom.
Even after 22 years, there is still never enough time to complete learning activities, and students very rarely respond the way they are scripted.
Stembridge, A. (2020). Culturally responsive education in the classroom: An equity framework for pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
After finishing our book clubs last semester, this video captures our whole-class book study.
With 27 fifth-graders crammed into a small mobile classroom, I stumble about 378 times per day!
Thank you for the card and stickers! So fun to be connected to other educators who care so much. Your Substack always inspires or causes me to reflect. Today’s had me thinking about me constantly floating around. Students calling out to me as if they’re asking for the next dance. It’s exhausting and rewarding. I really hope that I’m helping them.
Thanks for writing this. It was very helpful/inspiring.