A Teacher Suggests Retention Activities Based on 39 Years Before the Board

Teaching for Retention, Part 2
Dan Riordan
April 2008

In another article I listed a number of attitudes and actions that teachers can follow to create classes that positively affect retention. That article was based on and phrased in the parlance of research. This article is based on and phrased in the experiences of 39 years in the classroom.

Creating a retention-positive class:

1. The basic attitude is “I care that you learn.” Make that attitude permeate your work.
   
2. The basic activity is “Set up relationships.” The key one is developing the I care attitude between you and students. But develop a meaningful one between students.
   
3. The basic classroom must be “safe.”
   

What should, or shouldn’t, you do in the “I care, We relate, Safe class”?

• Learn students’ names and use them respectfully.
  
• Explain who you are, what your standards are, and how you see this class fitting in, if not to their lives, at least with the rest of their college courses.
  
• Don’t belittle (and be aware that there are quite a few ways to belittle) them for what they don’t know or how they act, particularly how they act at question/discussion time. Get curious. Figure out why they are reticent.
  
• Teach “Courageous Curiosity.” Assume that very probably your students only ask questions to find out what they need to know in order to succeed in your class. Think for a minute about how you want to know what you have to do to get tenure, get promoted, get a good evaluation. They are like you. If answering questions is important, figure out a professional, I-care-about-you way to tell them that.
  
• More on Courageous Curiosity: Most students (actually most people) are not going to speak out in a class of fifty. Neither are you. Think about question sessions after a speaker. The questions are hard to come by and often are directed at the speaker in order to take issue with or probe the speaker; they aren’t a group dialog. To speak out takes courage; to participate in a group dialog with 25 people is actually a pretty rare event. Students don’t think to put curiosity—“What happens if we try…?” “Why would that be true?” Etc.—to work, and, if they do, they won’t bring it up in a class of 50. You need to teach them how.
  
• Don’t play “50 questions.” If you ask and ask and ask and you get that awful silence, use another tactic. Make them write answers and hand in what they wrote and grade the answers. Or go back to lecturing.
  
• Quit talking to just two people. If everyone just sits there and you call repeatedly on one or two students, something is "off." People in the class can easily think “Why should I talk when whoever will be sure to answer? Beisdes I am neither courageous or curious. And if I am curious, I will keep it to myself.” Use another strategy.
  
• Don’t ask questions you know the answer to. Quit asking fill in the blank questions. Is your discussion session an exploration or a test?
  
• Decide what you mean by a “good discussion” and act accordingly. Is it that 10% talk? 50% talk? Volunteer? Without prompting comment on someone else’s answer? Be serious—how likely is that? If that is what you want, how will you get it? And why do you want it in the first place? Figure out how to make discussions work. More, figure out why you want students to enter them. How is the discussion supposed to help them? What are they supposed to get out of a discussion? Tell them. Be clear about how you see discussions helping them learn. You won’t get better discussions by getting sarcastic, by asking more and more questions, or by leaving the room. If you analyze how and why you are engaging students, you can figure out other strategies that will get the discussion going.
  
• Assign points to what is important. If arriving in class with the reading finished and understood is important, find a way to give points both for being ready or subtract for not being ready. But you have to find a way to do it without being mean or petty. Talk to colleagues. Ask the students. If you don’t want to give points, be careful. You send the message that even though you moan about it, a student won’t lose or gain anything by reading or not. If misspelling is something that makes you annoyed, give points for it. If spelling is a big deal, make it worth lots of points. If you are annoyed but only take off 3-5 points out of 100, the reaction is “Big deal. Twenty spelling mistakes is no worse than two, so who cares?”
  
• If you use groups, they should be more than a bunch of people sitting around talking. Devise a way to find out if the goal for the group was achieved and give points for that.
  
• Don’t trash your students to your colleagues. Be a professional. If things aren’t going right, what can you do about it?
  
• Give meaningful feedback quickly. Explain your comments in enough clarity so that a person can either change or continue to act/think that way. Responding quickly helps set the tone that you care about their learning.
  
• Explain to people what they did well. It is easier to get people to repeat the good, than correct the wrong. And it is a lot easier to accept a correction if it is in the context of “let’s build your learning--you have this done, now work on that.”
  
• Be passionate about your subject. But understand that no doubt you are the person in the room most passionate about it. Students will respond to your passion, though maybe not as if they were at a rock concert or a political rally.
  
• If you use technology, figure out how it works. The ports on your computer and the buttons on the workstations are not medieval instruments of torture. An hour of using the scientific method of working through possibilities will pay enormous dividends. And use the technologist’s mantra—“Test, Test, Re-test” before you perform.
  
• Assume that students have to invest themselves to learn. Some of them know that and act accordingly. Others don’t. Praise the former. Help the latter.
  
• If you use laptops in class, assume that they function as a distraction unless you create specific uses for them. And assume that in any group of people, of any age or level of responsibility, some members will be distracted by them. The students in your class are no different than any other group. You have to take charge of this new dimension of classroom presence. But find a meaningful, I-care-about-your-learning way to do it.