Dilatory Time

Ron Ritchhart articulates a list of a dozen criteria for "classroom thoughtfulness" in his book Intellectual Character. While I won't reproduce it in full here, since it appears to be traditionally copyrighted and licensed, there were a couple that stood out to be as good principles for teacher self-reflection, which is a big push of mine this year.

There are some high-falutin' ones, but I think it would be interesting to focus on one of the most basic building blocks of class discussion and behavior: "In this class, students were given an appropriate amount of time to think, that is, to prepare responses to questions."

I remember, as a young teacher, having an incredibly hard time with this. I'd come to class with a beloved copy of the text crammed with marginalia, and I'd throw a humdinger of a question out to my students. The weight of my hand would hold the book open at the key page, my ring finger half-obscuring a scratched out comment along the lines of "is this a reference back to the initial images of glass and water?" or maybe a simple exclamation like "whaa?" I'd be buzzing with the kind of knowledge you only have if you really love a text.

And my kids would like the text too, partly because it was great and partly because I so clearly loved it. And most of them had read, too. And all of them were thinking about my question. And none of them would volunteer an answer. After about ten seconds' silence, I'd ask another question, and then another, with a kind of quiet desperation. Then I'd ask an easier, less interesting question. I'd slide in that direction until I was asking something easy enough for a kid to confidently supply a simple answer, and on the discussion would limp. I'd leave the class a bit disappointed in myself. I didn't know then, and I barely know now, that the missing catalyst was time. We cannot love enough to overcome the simple march of time.

I was in year four of a torrid love affair with the text. My students were just hearing its first pickup line. They needed time to flirt a bit if they were going to get something out of the relationship.

Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest. I didn't realize that so many of my problems boiled down to a procedural issue. I had everything I needed already, but I wasn't giving it time. My kids needed not just a passionate, honest question but also a chance to reflect on it. They needed ten minutes to poke through the text for a good quotation and to write about it. Then, their thoughts had a bit of structure and depth, and the kids had a bit of confidence about sharing it.

This technique is so common and obvious that I hesitate to even call it a technique, and most English teachers reading this will have not just figured out the solution before I got to it, but they probably saw the problem coming in paragraph three. But I still think it's worth saying, and I think it's a principle that applies to much harder issues of teaching and learning.

Are your students being given an appropriate amount of time to think? And what are you doing to help them engage in their heads, through their pens, and on their keyboards? Have you given them the ingredients and the time they need to mix them?