Technique 37: What To Do

(Part of chapter 6, Setting and Maintaining High Behavioral Expectations)

The technique means "Give directions clearly."  Doug Lemov claims

Some portion of student noncompliance -- a larger portion than many teachers ever suppose -- is caused not by defiance but by incompetence: by students' misunderstanding a direction, not knowing how to follow it, or tuning out in a moment of benign distraction.

To overcome this, the instructor must give clear, useful guidance.

The first good point is that we need to give positive instructions -- not negative ones.  Tell a student what behavior is correct, not what behavior is wrong.  E.g., saying "Don't get distracted" doesn't tell the student what to do.  A second good point is that we need to be specific.  Saying "Pay attention" is vague.  It is better to tell the student exactly what to do.

Directions need to be specific, concrete, sequential, and observable:

• Specific: Tell the student exactly what to do.  Instead of "Pay attention", say, "Put your pencil down, and keep your eyes on me."
• Concrete: "Put your pencil down and keep your eyes on me" involves very concrete instructions.
• Sequential: tell the student exactly what steps to do, in what order.
• Observable: given instructions for which you can observe compliance or non-compliance.

An important point is the What To Do allows a teacher to distinguish between incompetence and defiance. If your commands are clear, then failure to do them can only be attributed to defiance.  If your commands are not clear, then perhaps the student just doesn't know how to carry them out.  In that case, you, the teacher, is at fault.

If you decide that the student is defiant, then you need to deal with it swiftly -- with consequences.  It is important to distinguish between these two situations and deal with each appropriately, so that the students doesn't feel like your reactions to noncompliance are unpredictable.

If students don't understand your specific, concrete instructions, then the teacher can break the instructions down into even smaller steps.

My response:

I don't generally have problems with defiance in my classroom, but I do have problems with incompetence.  And, I am sure I have mistaken the two in the past.  I am sure that I've told students to work on solving a programming problem, or answering a hard question, and then I've interpreted their lack of activity to defiance, when in actuality it was incompetence.  That's my fault.