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March 2004

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From:
"<Rick Jagels>" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Teaching Breakfast List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 24 Mar 2004 09:27:21 -0500
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Reflection is also an essential element to the moving of information
from short term to long term memory as well as aiding the synthesis of
ideas into the learner's schema...

-----Original Message-----
From: Teaching Breakfast List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Greenberg, James ([log in to unmask])
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 9:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Active Waiting - Posted to Teaching Breakfast List by Jim
Greenberg


"Active waiting also facilitates learning for the teacher.  It teaches
you what kinds of active waiting work best for you; for example, calming
and slowing in class while taking time to consider links between points
you've made; pausing until students solve problems. It coaches you to
examine what goals (if any) you are setting for student learning, while
preparing reflectively and patiently.  It encourages playfulness and
discovery during work at teaching.  And, active waiting helps moderate
the perfectionism that pressures many of us to suppose that we should
make no mistakes, that we must know everything, that we ought to be in
constant control."

Folks:

The posting below looks at the intriguing concept of "active waiting" as
it applies to class preparation and teaching. It is from Chapter 2, Wait
(Rule 2), in First-Order Principles for College Teachers: Ten Basic Ways
to Improve the Teaching Process, Robert Boice, State University of New
York - Stony Brook. Anker Publishing Company, Inc.,  Bolton,
Massachusetts. Copyright 1996 by Anker Publishing Company, Inc.
http://www.ankerpub.com/ Reprinted with permission.


                ACTIVE WAITING


What makes active waiting different from the passive kind?  It means
getting ready, often implicitly and preliminarily, while waiting.  So at
first, active waiting seems more difficult and time consuming.

Just as important, active waiting requires patience.  It means waiting
and reflecting and preparing ideas and other material for teaching
without impulsive rushing.  It means taking the time to test lecture and
discussion materials to see which of them will engage students as active
learners who comprehend-before settling on classroom content.  And
active waiting even extends to actual
teaching:  It includes the patience of presenting materials slowly and
clearly enough to promote ready comprehension in almost all students.

Said another way, active waiting requires the patience of not trying to
prepare or present everything you know.  Active waiting, because it
promotes early and informal starts, brings the kind of reflectiveness
essential to good decision-making and economical presentation.

Active Waiting Aims for Long-Term Rewards

Active waiting requires the kind of patience that tolerates short-term
discomforts (such as temptations to do something else more immediately
rewarding than preparing for teaching) in order to gain longer-term
rewards (e.g., students who learn more).  Active waiting means subduing
the part of yourself that admonishes you to put off thoughts of teaching
improvements until you are completely caught up on other things.  Active
waiting, surprisingly, means being able to do two or more things at once
(e.g., preparing for teaching during the little openings that occur even
during busy days, while nonetheless making enough progress on other
things). Oddest of all, active waiting also means suspending disbelief.
You might, for instance, believe that efficiencies could work for other
people by not for you ("I've always been kind of disorganized and
happily behind schedule; I could never stand this").

Active Waiting, Then, Is a Matter of Pausing Reflectively and Preparing
Preliminarily

It means starting preparations well before formal sessions of working on
teaching (e.g., by merely inducing us to think and notice during lulls
in other activities).  It helps teachers spend more of their preparation
time on finding imagination and motivation through the playful, unrushed
organization of materials.

Active Waiting is Economical

Because this patient reflection helps simplify material by way of
repeated exposures and reexaminations, lectures can be presented with
fewer main points and more explanations of each.  And when the
preparations are patient, simple, and reflective, so are the
presentations.  Teachers who learn to pause and notice during
preparations show the same kinds of timing and listening in class.

As a result of these economics, the pace is less taxing for teacher and
students.  The enjoyment of teaching grows from both sides.  The
students learn and retain more.

Active Waiting is Educational

Active waiting also facilitates learning for the teacher.  It teaches
you what kinds of active waiting work best for you; for example, calming
and slowing in class while taking time to consider links between points
you've made; pausing until students solve problems. It coaches you to
examine what goals (if any) you are setting for student learning, while
preparing reflectively and patiently.  It encourages playfulness and
discovery during work at teaching.  And, active waiting helps moderate
the perfectionism that pressures many of us to suppose that we should
make no mistakes, that we must know everything, that we ought to be in
constant control.

Active waiting works because it softens its opposites, perfectionism and
impatience.  Patience-not impatience-fosters playfulness, tentativeness,
and tolerance.

Make haste slowly
    Boileau

Other Benefits of Active Waiting

Active waiting has many other benefits, some of them hard to imagine
until experienced.  It brings serenity because it is neither tense nor
pressing. It provides a growing mindfulness of having something
important and worthwhile to say before saying it.  It promotes a more
causal but focuses attitude toward preparing and presenting; teaching
that once had to be written out is now more easily and enjoyably done
from conceptual outlines and diagrams that often fill but a page per
class.  With active waiting, and decisions about the final structure of
the content are put off, classes are more spontaneous and more likely to
involve students as active participants.  And, not least, with active
waiting there is more opportunity for discovery in teaching.

Discovery proves to be so much fun that it generates enthusiasm and
hooks people on teaching, even on campuses where teaching is not overtly
rewarded. One more advantage of active waiting is worth
mentioning: Teachers who practice it get reliably higher ratings by
their students (Boice, 1995a).

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