I realize my first two reasons for teachers to quit teaching were student-centered in nature. Teaching is passive and it is not engaging. So for this next reason I felt I should give a reason with the classroom educator as the focus by discussing how quitting teaching and designing learning will improve positive student behavior and cut out opportunities for misbehavior in the classroom. Some might be thinking that the next thing I will start presenting is some timeshare opportunity for you to invest in, but truly, hear me out. If we stop traditionally teaching and design for learning, students will cause less negative disruptions and you will not have to discipline nearly as often as you do now.
It points back to the fact that teaching, by its nature, is passive and unengaging for students. What happens when you as an adult get bored with something you are doing or listening to or participating in as part of a group? You doodle, get out your cellphone, open a tab on Pinterest, or start a conversation with a neighbor around you. Do any of these off-task behaviors sound familiar? They are ever-present in most middle school classrooms nationwide where teaching is taking place. Why?
It is because of engagement. If we are not given opportunities to think, discover, solve, explore and reason, our brains find other ways to do those things which may not involve learning about the solar system or how to solve two-step equations. Teachers have to design for learning by giving information out in shorter bursts along with intellectually engaging things for students’ brains to be occupied by in order to fight off the misbehaviors brought on by boredom. If we, as adults, struggle with it 15 minutes into a presentation, why do we expect a 12 year old to be able to be attentive and engaged in the same situation?
This is where teachers, particularly in the middle and high school arena, have to find ways to design possibilities for student exploration, discovery and reporting out. Teachers are not the sole keepers of knowledge. Middle and high school teachers teach the way they do because it has been passed down that way. If all we are as teachers is a method of content delivery, then we can be replaced today by YouTube. But, if a teacher chooses to be a learning engineer, then that teacher designs for learning to happen visibly in the room. Learning is a proactively planned for event that learning engineers craft every task, success criteria, formative checks, collaborative opportunities and all the other components around.
There is a trade off for becoming a learning engineer instead of a teacher. How many days do you leave exhausted while watching your kids do cartwheels out of the school doors? If you are willing to trade all the time you spend running from one student to the next in a classroom of 30 students, to trade the repeated redirection of behaviors and the constantly rising blood pressure you have trying to teach, then start designing learning. The trade off is this: quitting teaching requires a LOT of prep work, more than you have ever done before, but you will get ALL of your daily classtime and physical energy back. You will not have to run around the room, redirect, correct and manage a class of 30. Becoming a learning engineer will take many of the burdens you carry from bell-to-bell away, so that learning becomes the work of those to which it truly belongs: the students.
Teachers, please stop teaching to ease your burden of classroom management. You will gain all the time and energy back you had, and the ones who leave your room exhausted everyday will be your students instead of you.
