3 teaching practices to quietly quit in 2023
Making changes in the classroom is not always easy, but the new year offers opportunities for changing our approach to teaching. Changing your approach doesn’t have to mean changing every aspect of your practice. In fact, the most sustainable approach to shifting practice is to do so incrementally.
Peter DeWitt argues for de-implementation, stating that, “One way to alleviate, or at least minimize educators’ workload, is to evaluate which activities and initiatives are impactful and reduce or replace the ones that no longer serve us or our students well.”
It is this idea that lies at the heart of #SustainableTeaching: when we amplify what works and cut out what no longer aides us in serving learners, we unlock pathways to sustainability. These pathways are personal: there isn’t only one way to them or through them. After all, we all have differing strengths, challenges, and situations. While some may be able to make these shifts transparently, others may need to do so more subtly for their own wellbeing.
If you’re one of those, consider “quiet quitting” these practices in 2023 and beyond.
quit Grading Everything
While everything we have our learners do can and should be seen as an assessment, that doesn’t mean we have to grade everything our students touch in our classrooms. In fact, if you try to collect, assess, and return artifacts with written feedback, you might find yourself taking home boxes of work in the evenings and on the weekends, cementing your own burnout.
Instead, consider the following:
Only offer students tasks that will provide you, the teacher, insight into current understanding of essential skills. If the task isn’t helping you learn more about your learners, then it’s probably not worth giving in the first place. That said, all tasks don’t need to be assessed formally. Sometimes, assessment looks like circulating, assisting, providing verbal feedback, and jotting notes on student performance.
Embed assessment into your learning block. Bringing grading home not only results in precious personal time lost, it also means extending feedback loops, making it less likely that the feedback we offer learners will make an impact. When feedback loops are prompt, specific, and actionable, however, they make a great impact. Inevitably, this means changing the structure of your learning block to allow for more reflection and feedback, or even carving out full instructional blocks for small-group or individualized conferencing on recent tasks or assessments.
Create an assessment calendar. Before beginning a unit of instruction, identify opportunities and a timeline for collecting and providing written feedback on formal assessments. This will allow you to take stock of which assessments will be suitable for report card grades or portfolio entries, meanwhile ensuring you have allotted yourself enough time to collect, assess, and provide written feedback.
quit Giving Meaningless Homework
This one is tough, because so many schools require learners to have homework. However, homework doesn’t have to entail packets and worksheets. Packets and worksheets are ultimately compliance-based: they don’t provide insight into learners’ processes, and they rarely build sustained learning habits that will serve them for their whole lives.
Instead, consider meaningful homework that builds learning habits, connects to their lives, or gives them opportunities to connect with family members. Nightly independent reading or free journaling will both build literacy skills and help learners build healthy routines with reading and writing. Consider meaningful literacy and math activities like labeling pantry items for younger students or calculating the grocery bill for older students. Offering math games that build computation and fluency skills can bring families together, meanwhile practicing critical skills that only come through repetition.
Quit Relying Only on Leveled Groups
It’s true that creating skill-based groups can be efficient, helping us sustainably meet the needs of a diverse group of learners. However, this doesn’t require placing students in rigidly leveled groups. Doing so might mean you’re inadvertently tracking students, offering different levels of rigor to different groups of learners. This is inequitable, as it creates opportunity gaps in the classroom.
Instead, carve out time to pull heterogeneous small groups, in addition to your homogeneous, skill-based groups. In Reclaiming Personalized Learning, I offer a two-dimensional tool for creating both homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. On one axis, create your leveled groups; on the other, create heterogeneous groups so that students of varying abilities can work together.
Can you tell which groups are leveled or mixed? Neither can they.
amplify what works
When we quietly quit these practices that serve neither teachers nor learners, we not only reduce teachers’ workloads, we also create more time for teachers to deepen and refine practices that work. In the best of scenarios, we also create time for teachers’ gifts to shine in their classrooms, as they’re no longer bogged down by meaningless or menial tasks.
Not sure where to start? Consider the following:
List both sustainable and unsustainable practices in a t-chart. If you need more structure, consider listing curriculum, assessment, or instructional practices that you find either easy or challenging to sustain over the course of the school year.
Once you’ve listed these practices, identify low-hanging fruit. Which changes can be made in the short-term? Which changes require more planning and communication? Choose changes that feel sustainable, as our approach to #SustainableTeaching must be sustainable, in and of itself.
Create an action plan, and work with an accountability buddy, if possible. This action plan should be specific, actionable, and time-bound. With your buddy, reflect on the degree to which these changes have increased sustainability.
