It’s time to be The Lazy Teacher

Posted on by J.J. Hamilton

It’s eight thirty in the morning. You’ve been in school for an hour already and the printer’s jammed. Briefing has just started, but you’ll need to be late to this one, which is fine since you’re always so prompt to everything else.

Quick, time to let your form into their room. Check standards, deliver PSHE, and usher them onto their period 1 lesson – and go to yours, too. Break time will come and go, especially if you’re on duty, and if you’ve had time for lunch, then you might have squeezed in time for printing before period 5, since the printer’s suddenly fixed itself.

Before too long, it’s the end of the day. You’ve a boat-load of marking and phone calls to make to follow up on the poor behaviour choices made by some learners throughout the day. If you’re lucky, you’ll have time to go to the gym class that you’ve been putting off.

Rinse and repeat.

Let’s put a stop to increasingly large workloads. Here’s how I’ve been cutting down on hours of time during the day, all while being much, much lazier and even better at teaching than before.

Lazy behaviour management

Okay, so obviously you’re not going to really be lazy. I think it’s impossible to be lazy and a good teacher, since it’s a career with a lot of responsibility. No teacher that I know would ever be proud of the job that they’ve done if they shirked their teaching responsibilities – by sitting at their desk all lesson instead of helping their students, or by failing to give feedback because they ‘can’t be bothered’. When I talk about laziness, it’s simply about cutting down on the number of things that you need to do in your own free time – and doing them in the moment during a lesson instead.

Let’s take behaviour management as one example.

At my school, we have a very clear behaviour policy: first warning; refocus (our version of an isolation room). As far as I’m aware, when it was first introduced (before my time), it was incredibly strictly enforced. In the years since, the policy’s gone through a number of changes, but one thing has stayed the same: first warning; refocus.

What we are encouraged to do alongside this system is employ our behaviour toolkit. It is up to us, as teachers in our classroom, to manage behaviour as we see fit. While we still need to employ that first warning and then a refocus referral, for consistency across the school, you can issue verbal warnings and other consequences in your classroom as much as you like.

Doing so in teaching is essential.

Why?

Well, a refocus referral requires you to call the student’s parents to explain why you’ve had to place their child into refocus. Such a call can lead to a much longer conversation taking place; suddenly five minutes have elapsed, and you’ve hung up the phone. Then, you’ll need to go to the refocus room during your free time to find the student and have a restorative conversation with them. These chats are essential for rebuilding the relationship and ensuring a smooth start into your classroom, ready for the next lesson.

Such a conversation can take up to ten minutes, which includes navigating your way across the school. That’s fifteen minutes per child. If you followed the warning system to the tee, you could be making refocus referrals for every child that ever dares interrupt you. In a six-period day, you’ll be seeing around 180 children; a number as small as 4 refocus referrals out of 180 students doesn’t feel too bad, but even that would be around an hour of follow up.

That’s a lot.

Here’s my lazy solution: keep them in your lesson.

Children want to do well. Likewise, I want to build positive relationships with my students. Therefore, rather than following the warning system to the letter of the law, I remind students to make the right choices. I show shock that ‘some’ people are talking in my lesson, despite ‘90% of people in here making the right choices’ – while staring at the guilty party. As a result, the majority of students – no matter how small – know that they’re doing the right thing. Those making the wrong choices feel compelled to change their ways.

Okay, but let’s say that doesn’t go so well and the situation escalates. I have had children getting aggravated in my class and feeling angry towards me, so I’ve very calmly asked them to step outside. I might given them an opportunity to use the app How We Feel to help them to regulate their emotions (you can read about how this free app works on this blog post linked here). I’ve given them time to calm down and then – still exceptionally calmly – asked them what’s going wrong in my lesson. I’ve reiterated that this isn’t the person that I’m used to seeing; I focus on the poor behaviour choice, rather than targeting them, and whether there’s anything that I can do to help. When they respond with ‘no’, and appear to have calmed down, I let them back into my lesson.

What could have been a 15-minute follow up during my free time has turned into a 30 second chat (if that!) while the lesson is going on. I’ve maintained a positive relationship and shown that I want the student in my lesson. Maybe I’ll use all of that extra time after school to phone home for a positive call, which is always nicer than starting with a negative one.

Lazy marking

Assessment is so important in a school. You need to know whether the students have got it, and whether that means that they’re ready to move on.

We do in-the-moment AFL checks. These are Assessments For Learning, and let us know whether there are any misconceptions and if they’re ready for the next bit of learning. We also mark two formally written pieces of work per term for our KS3 students.

KS4 and KS5 is a little different.

You mark those as often as you can, offering feedback and giving them opportunity to improve in lesson. They also do assessments, which you have to give three-step marking for (What Went Well, Even Better If, and a specific Next Step to show what they need to do next to improve).

That’s all well and good but, if you marked every bit of writing that your exam groups did, you’d be at work till the break of dawn. Let’s make your marking a little lazier: instead of doing this all in your free time, try your best to do as much in-the-moment marking as possible. While your students are writing, don’t just sit at your desk, twiddling your thumbs – get up and live mark instead!

Not only will this reduce how much you’ll need to do once they’ve gone home, but it’ll also be useful for your students, since they’ll understand immediately what they’re doing well at and how to improve. If they can score just one extra mark from the comments that you leave while they’re writing, that could eventually translate into an extra grade in their exam.

Plus, by cutting down on how much you need to do in your spare time, you’re guaranteeing that the students will get feedback – rather than putting off marking in the moment since you’re too busy, and then before you know it, too much time will have passed to make that feedback worthwhile.

Do you have any lazy techniques that have turned you into a better teacher? Share them in the comments below!

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