“Nothing, really,” is a chronic response to the legendary parent inquiry “What did you do at school today?” Nothing. Really? Seven-plus hours at school time and you did nothing? But, what if this response was true. Can a child actually shrink into the invisibility of non-participation, non-volunteering, shrugging off a teacher’s question, minimizing any response to teacher direction, and skate through the school day without any meaningful involvement? You bet.
It is relatively easy for a child to become invisible in a classroom. There are three basic tenets to invisibility. Never raise your hand. Never cause trouble. Answer every teacher question with “I don’t know.” And, there may be a fourth – sit halfway back in the outside rows of desks and chairs. These are the desks least frequently scanned by teachers. With these four behaviors, any child can become invisible.
A child can choose to be invisible. Sadly, invisibility can also be bred into instructional designs albeit unintentionally. Given a class of 25-plus children and a pre-determined number of minutes for teacher-led instruction, statistically only a handful of children will be directly engaged. This is true for elementary and secondary instruction. A lesson design that commits the majority of class time for student work begins with a teacher connecting today’s lesson with yesterday’s lessons. This is followed by the teacher providing new information, showing new skills, demonstrating expanded ways of doing what was learned yesterday, and modeling this instruction. The third component of the lesson is focused on the teacher checking to see if children heard, saw, and understood her instruction. The teacher calls on several children to repeat, re-model, re-tell the teacher’s instruction. In most lessons, the teacher does not ask every child to participate in this checking of student understanding, but randomly calls on children. If four out five children, 80% of the class, make an accurate and positive response, the teacher typically and with statistical confidence can proceed to the independent student work time of the lesson. In this design, less than a quarter of the 25 children will be queried and of these eight children one or two can get by with an “I don’t know.” Whole group teaching and an 80% positive response indicator allow children to become invisible.
Time also works for invisibility. An elementary math or ELA assignment is tucked into a full morning of math, ELA, social studies and specials. A secondary class of 45 to 50 minutes always ends with a bell. If a child makes it to the tenth minute of most lessons without being personally engaged, they are most likely to be invisible for the entire lesson.
We know that “Nothing, really” also is a child’s way of not wanting to engage with a parent. This supper table response, like “I don’t know” in school, is a child’s way of saying “I don’t want to talk with you.” Many children who voluntarily and actively engage in school instruction use the “Nothing, really” to stiff-arm talking about school with their parent. Consequently, every child who says “Nothing, really” at home was not invisible in school. In fact, they may have been stellar students who just don’t want to talk with their parents.
The degree of invisibility a child achieves, however, rests on the teacher. We cannot allow children to choose to and succeed in becoming invisible in our classroom. Two time-tested strategies for engaging children are these: keep a running record of student engagement and never accept an “I don’t know” response.
Sociometrics allows a teacher to chart the number and type of student interactions observed by the teacher. Or, better yet, observations are made by an “observer” or mentor-coach in the classroom. The use of sociometric tracking of student engagements was vogue in the 80s and early 90s and does not receive much discussion today. But, it is a quality strategy for tracking student interaction.
A teacher uses a seating chart and makes notations of interactions. One notation will indicate the children the teacher called on. One notation indicates that the child volunteered. Another notation is used to indicate that the child was “called on” by the teacher. A fourth notation indicates that a child asked a question. And, a fifh notation indicates that a child responded to another child’s question or comment. Across several days, a notated seating chart describes for a teacher the patterns of child interaction and those children who have not interacted – the invisible children. Knowledge is power and sociometrics points the teacher toward an engagement of all children.
“I don’t know” is a child response that needs to be eradicated from classrooms. When a child says “I don’t know”, a teacher can follow with “Then tell me what you think about…” or “Tell me how you feel about…” or “Ask me one question that will help you to know.” Whereas, a child may not know the correct answer to a question, that child does have a “thought” or a “feeling” about how the question can be answered. Eradicating “I don’t know” requires an immediate follow-up engagement by the teacher. When the child sits in silence to the second inquiry, allowing a smidgeon of wait time is good, but then persist. “You have had time to think – now tell us what you think.”
The message to children when teachers track their instructional engagement and do not accept “I don’t know” responses is clear. All children in this classroom will be active learners.
As a final comment, a teacher who tracks child interactions and does not accept “I don’t knows” is heavily armed when a parent declares “Every night my child says they didn’t do anything in school today. What’s going on in your classroom?” Well, here are the facts in my classroom where I engage every child everyday and these are the ways your child was engaged today. Nothing! Really?