You Teach a Class of 25 Individual Students, Not a Monolithic Many-Headed Behemoth

Three examples

In our everyday lives, humans interact with lots of other humans. Most of the time in these interactions, we need to keep track of approximately one other human’s thoughts and feelings. That’s not easy! It’s not easy to live your life while also thinking about the perspective of another human sitting or standing across from you.

Teaching is an order of magnitude more difficult. The task is to keep track of 25 humans in front of you. Oh, and three of them have to pee, one is mad at the kid he’s sitting next to, two forgot their pencils, one is glaring at you for some reason, and another is kicking the table in front of her every time she thinks you’re not looking.

One of the hardest intellectual tasks as a teacher is keeping all that complexity in your mind. Teachers often say, “oh, they know that,” or “they’re confused about X.” Well not every student knows that. You mean most students know that. But that’s a hard idea to hold in your head, so we end up with this shorthand as if a class of students isn’t 25 individuals, but some weird monolithic many-headed behemoth.

Here are three ways that’s bad.

Moving On

You teach something. You realize most students understand it. So you say, “Great, looks like we understand this, let’s move on.” But actually, only 22 of the 25 students understand it. This sends an unmistakable message: there is an “us” in the room, but those last three students aren’t part of it.

There are practical considerations in teaching. Sometimes we have to move on. But the framing matters. Will you circle back to this topic in the future? Will you follow up with students individually? Is there a time students can get extra help? Don’t just say, “Great, we understand this.” Say, “Thanks everyone. We’ll keep working on this topic later in the week,” or make a note and follow up with those last few students individually. Anything that doesn’t render students invisible.

Using the Restroom

I have taught a lot of students who have made poor choices in the restroom. Fights, vandalism, vaping, wandering the school, and more. It’s a challenging problem to solve. But here is a hill I will die on: student A does not lose their right to go to the bathroom because student B (or students B, C, D, E, F, and whoever else) made poor choices in the restroom.

Whether it’s an administrator responding to bathroom vandalism or a teacher saying “no more bathroom visits this class,” after a trash can gets toppled in the hallway, we often respond with consequences for the many in response to the transgressions of a few. In many cases punishing everyone else just adds to the humor for the culprits. In the long run, it creates exactly the negative feelings toward school that cause students to tear toilets out of walls. Students are not some hive-mind organism that makes collective decisions. One or a few students made a decision, and we can separate those students from everyone else — even if we don’t know who the specific culprits are.¹

Math Identity

Here’s an activity that has become more common in math classes in the last few years (on my mind because I got a marketing email suggesting something like it yesterday): some version of a mathematical autobiography. Early in the school year, the teacher asks students to describe their experience with math. There are lots of variations on this activity — some narrative, some artistic, with different prompts or structure. The goal is to surface how students feel about math, and to start conversations that will (hopefully) lead to a positive change in those feelings. Disclaimer: I’ve done lots of these in the past!

Whenever I’ve done some variation on this activity, I’m always struck by how many students feel negatively about math. There’s plenty more to learn as well, but that’s always the headline takeaway. So what do I do about it? Well, here’s the truth. In a given class I’ll manage to glean a few solid takeaways. Start an interesting conversation, connect with a student about something they wrote. But for every win and every relationship built, there are a bunch more students who say something negative about math and never feel like it goes anywhere. It’s easy for me to mistake a few anecdotes for broad success. I think about that one student I had a great conversation with, and let that conversation stand in for the entire class. There are a bunch of other students in the room who write about how much they don’t like math, and they just go on…continuing to not like math. My job is to hold in my head that I can have some good conversations with a few students, but the goal is to teach everyone. How does the rest of the class feel?

Double Vision

I think this is one of the most challenging intellectual tasks of teaching. I could give more examples — calling on a single student and assuming the rest of the class is on the same page, generalizing about how long students can pay attention, responding to classroom behavior.

Teaching requires a kind of double vision. Seeing the class as a whole and responding to broad patterns, while also recognizing each student as an individual and seeing the range of experiences within any given class. Getting that right is an important part of teaching, and also an important part of helping every student feel like they are a valued member of the classroom community.

1. I am constantly amazed at how many teachers feel comfortable justifying draconian bans on bathroom use because some students abuse the privilege. I don’t deny it’s a problem — it’s been a serious problem in my school for years, though better now with our new phone ban. But you might be surprised how many students are terrified, holding their pee for hours because they’re worried they’ll get yelled at for asking to go to the bathroom.