Wax On, Wax Off

Remember that great scene from the original "The Karate Kid" movie, where Daniel has been working hard waxing cars, sanding decks, painting fences, etc.? Frustrated, Daniel says "We had a deal. You're supposed to teach and I'm supposed to learn." Then Miagi delivers the famous line "Show me Wax on, wax off" and proceeds to guide Daniel through a demonstration of the karate skills he didn't know he'd learned. I love that scene; probably because it's a great teaching and learning moment.

So I was watching that movie the other day, and it just popped into my head. "The one doing the work is the one doing the learning.*" The great ones are always simple, aren't they? The one doing the work is the one doing the learning. Daniel's understanding of teaching and learning was all wrong, and for good reason. It's the way classrooms have been run for hundreds of years. The teacher does all the heavy lifting. It's why you're so tired the first day of school every year.



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Grant Wiggins posted this fantastic article "A Veteran Teacher Turned Coach Shadows 2 Students for 2 Days - a Sobering Lesson Learned" which illustrates very clearly that in a large percentage of classrooms in the U.S., the teacher is doing the work. So it begs the question, "Who's doing the learning?"

Of course, just because it's easy to say, doesn't mean it's easy to do. Even the simplest shift in how we teach can be extremely difficult. But putting it in such simple terms helps. Who's doing the work? Who's active and who's passive? Who is contributing and who is listening? I think just that simple mental shift can make all the difference in the students' experience in our classrooms.

Theory is good, but for teachers, examples are better. Here are some practical ideas you can implement to help you make the shift.

1. Make your lesson more interactive. Socrative is my favorite app for getting students involved, because it's so easy. Students can connect on any device - all they need is a browser and your virtual room number. You can prepare questions ahead of time, or just give them on the fly. Students "vote" on their device for the answer they choose. It can be used to guide a discussion, to find out how well students have understood the topic or for any formative assessment.
2. Screencasting - Have students teach one another. With screencasting, students use voice and images (drawn or graphics) to explain a topic. A great deal of learning takes place as students have to break down the topic visually and narrate the process. Explain Everything is a very popular app for this. However, my favorite is ShowMe, because there's virtually no learning curve for the app, which allows the students to focus on the lesson. In one of my favorite lessons, students chose a topic and then they had to receive their "license" to teach it through an oral interview with me. (They were so proud!) They then had to teach a certain number of students via their screencasts. The students who were "taught" decided whether or not the lesson was effective. If so, they gave the "teacher" a token. The students' grade was based on the number of tokens they received.
3. Blogging - The beauty of blogs is that they instantly change the audience for students' writing. Blog posts also need to be fairly concise, which teaches students another skill. It also increases the interactivity as students comment on other students' posts. Add another dimension by inviting an expert in your field to blog with your students.
4. Teach students to formulate the guiding questions. Think of the process you have to go through to design a good lesson. Those are all skills your students desperately need. Take your topic and guide your students through the process of deriving the guiding questions from it. It will take practice. But eventually, you will be able to offer a topic and the students will determine for themselves the essential questions. When they can do that, you can turn the learning over to them completely and shift your role to guide. Then you have created a truly student-centered classroom.

*I don't know who said this originally, but I've heard it at conferences and on Twitter. If it was you, let me know and I'll give you credit.