Best Practice / First Year of Teaching

Best Practice /First Year of Teaching

The Influence of Teaching

Over a decade ago, I started to follow closely the work of Dr. Ronald Ferguson and his work on closing the minority achievement gap in schools. I thought his work was powerful and more importantly, it made a great deal of sense to me. I was watching the gaps in my school widen. I spent a great deal of time addressing this issue, and our gaps started to shrink. Ferguson’s Tripod Project(Ferguson,2015) seeks to gather student input from well-aligned student surveys to enable districts to pinpoint professional development and change the way teachers interact with students.

I have personally used some of the elements of the Tripod Project to develop a very informal rudimentary hiring tool which helped me gauge the candidates content knowledge, pedagogical skill, and the ability of the candidate to build relationships with students. As I evolved as an administrator, I found that the most important leg of this tripod is the teacher’s ability to build relationships with students. This relationship building skill is, in my opinion, magnified in urban districts. The importance of relationship building makes sense inasmuch as if one does not have a very positive relationship with students, all of the powerful content knowledge one possesses or the best practice pedagogical skill one has will be rendered useless if the students lack trust and confidence in at specific teacher.

In today’s post, I would like to take a look at the Tripod Project 7Cs™ of Effective Teaching. I strongly encourage you to read more about the Tripod Project.

The Tripod Project uses these 7Cs to help predict student behaviors that influence student agency. Ferguson defines agency as the capacity and propensity to take purposeful initiative. (Ferguson, 2015). My short article today does not pretend to look at the Tripod Project in any depth. The purpose is to expose you to the 7Cs and have you think about them as you execute your daily lessons. I do believe these elements are important to your students and how you think about them. It may also encourage you to reflect and perhaps work to change your teaching style. In future posts, we will take a look at student agency, which I believe can significantly impact student achievement.

Listed below are the 7Cs of the Tripod Project along with a brief definition:

Care-Teachers are emotionally supportive and interested in students.
Confer-Teachers talk with students, as well as welcome and respect student perspectives.
Captivate-Teachers make learning relevant and interesting.
Clarify-Teachers explain things clearly, provide informative feedback, clear up confusion, and make lessons understandable.
Consolidate-Teachers summarize and integrate learning.
Challenge-Teachers press students to think rigorously and persist when experiencing difficulty.
Classroom management-Teachers work to develop a respectful cooperative classroom climate and on-task behavior. (Ferguson 2015)

Teachers must work to strike an effective balance within the elements.

Now let us take a look at some of the implications presented across the 7Cs:

Care-Teachers must be attentive and sensitive but are not to coddle.
Confer-Teachers must not waste time with idle chatter.
Captivate-Teachers must be aware that some students may hide their interest.
Clarify-Teachers must take regular steps to detract and respond to confusion. Don’t just tell students the answers.
Consolidate-Teachers must regularly summarize lessons.
Challenge-Teachers must anticipate resistance but still persist.
Classroom management-Students must be respectful, orderly, and on task because they are captivated and challenged, not coerced. (Ferguson 2015)

In my work with teachers, I have emphasized my 4Es for teaching excellence. Namely:

Expectations-Teachers must possess high expectations of all students.
Enthusiasm-Teachers must possess a personal enthusiasm for learning that is contagious.
Empowerment-Teachers must give students a voice in their classrooms.
Environment-Teachers must establish an environment that communicates that within this classroom, student learning is important.

I am hopeful that if one takes a new look at how he/she teaches with the 7Cs and 4Es as a backdrop student engagement, student achievement, and overall learning will improve.

Good luck. Next week we will take a more in depth look at student agency.

References

Ferguson, Ronald with Phillips, Sariah F., Rowley F.S. and Friendlander, Jocelyn(2015). The Influence of Teaching: Beyond Standardized Test Scores, Engagement, Mindsets and Agency. Retrieved from htpp://www.agi.harvard.edu/publications.php