The best teachers lead classrooms not merely by teaching but by facilitating.  They not only create learning experiences; they also create circumstances for learning experiences to come about in various forms.  Even better, they create environments that sustain learning on their own.

Or perhaps the phenomenon is not as spontaneous and magical as it sounds.  Students, of course, drive this process.

Students love to help, and, particularly in lower grade levels, they have a strong tendency to admire and emulate their teachers.  In fact, many of them are eager to teach.

For all of our enthusiasm to put a paper crown on a student’s head simply because it is her birthday and single her out as special based on our genuine gratitude that she is part of our world and our classroom, we should just as readily put her in front of her classmates once every five or six weeks to present a brief lesson or demonstrate a concept or skill.  She and all of her classmates have varying instructional gifts to bestow, based on interests and abilities, on their classmates.  And since almost all students struggle, teacher-appointed specialists can always be on hand as tutors for their peers.  Encouraged and coordinated on a schoolwide level, each classroom will inevitably become more than the sum of its parts.

Classrooms need not carry on in this fashion as separate entities, either.  Universities have teaching assistants who teach students on lower levels.  From elementary grades straight through high school, students have much to offer by visiting younger students to assist in their classrooms.  Those same students have much to gain in terms of leadership and feeling oneself a part of a process that makes a difference for all concerned.

And there is no better learning experience for disruptive students than to be sent into a kindergarten classroom in order to lead activities and games.  On multiple levels, such an assignment can realign a young person’s impulses for attention and validation.  Moreover, it gives the child a new understanding of the effects of poor behavior on others.

Students love to help.  They crave opportunities to feel valued and useful–not based on facile affirmations chanted in class–but as a result of making a meaningful contribution to their classrooms and their schools.

I am participating in the Two Writing Teachers March 2023 Slice of Life Challenge.