The Lazy Teacher's Handbook: How your students learn more when you teach less

Foreword to the First Edition

‘Last Thursday, dressed like Minnie Mouse and sick with the flu, I sang the Hokey Cokey song to a classroom full of gawking parents and students. As usual, the students just sat there in silence as I sang slightly off-key to myself. And as the song on the CD got to the part, Put your bottom in, I thought I’ll quit before I bend over in front of this room full of people. I’d reached my limit of humiliating situations I was willing to endure in the name of being a good teacher. So I shut off the CD player mid-song and taught the rest of the lesson from the comfortable position of my chair.’

The above is an on-line blog from an EFL teacher in Japan who has written it from the ‘Lazy English Teacher’s’ point of view. It sums up, I feel, what goes through the mind of so many teachers, this nagging sense that they are working so much harder than the children. And that this can’t be right.

Teacher stress is a big issue. According to the on-line ‘Teacher Stress Archive’, work-related stress is the biggest health and safety issue in four out of five schools in the UK, leading to health issues including ‘anxiety, depression, heart disease, back pain, gastrointestinal disturbances and various minor illnesses’. It even has its own acronym in research circles – TSB or Teacher Stress and Burn Out. (There is an irony in calling it TSB in view of the fact that teachers often find it difficult to say no.)

And that’s when you’ve been teaching for a while. According to an article in The Independent a while back, the pressures teachers are under in their first year of teaching, ‘are equivalent to someone coming out of medicine and becoming a brain surgeon straight away’.

When I started teaching I remember likening it to being constantly in a business meeting, always this sense of needing to be somewhere else doing something else but not quite being able to get there. What’s more, it all kicked off the moment you arrived in the car park. Sometimes I couldn’t get the door open for all the students standing there with their wild excuses about why they hadn’t done their French homework. Not the long and gentle lead-in to the daily grind that I had when I worked for a local council. Here, people used to tell me that they didn’t really do any work until the tea trolley had been round. That was at 10.30 am. According to research from 1987 on the problem of TSB,* there are two things that can be done. One is to learn how better to deal with stress. In other words, this is the way it is, it’s not going to change so how can I ensure I am responding to it in the most healthy and effective way. Rather than reaching for the corkscrew the minute you get back from work it could be a spot of meditation and some visualisation techniques. Then the corkscrew. The other approach is what the researchers call ‘direct action’. In other words, addressing the root cause of the stress in the first place. Which brings me back to the teacher who was all Hokey Cokeyed out.

Without taking away from how serious work stress is, I do wonder how much more teachers can do to help themselves? What if we were able to work less? What if we stopped trying to control everything that happened in our classrooms, all the time? What if we could have the students doing more of the work? What if this was taught from day one as we started our career? What if our aim was to send them home exhausted at the end of the day whilst we were the ones who skipped off to the sweet shop? And what if working in such a way not only helped improve our erstwhile skewed work–life balance but also improved the quality of their learning?

In other words, what if we taught less, but they learnt more? Far from being some distant nirvana, this is exactly what The Lazy Teacher’s Handbook is describing, through the words and deeds of Jim Smith, the laziest teacher in town. So much of what goes on in your working day, from tutor time to testing, setting lesson objectives to setting homework, could be delegated to your students in a way that saves you energy but also involves them in the process of learning in a way that is both motivational and effective when it comes to their own achievement. And before you think to yourself that you could see yourself doing such a thing with your top set but not that bottom set group you always do battle with, remember, like respect, you get control by giving it. The more you can let them ‘take over’, the fewer battles you will have. This is something I have seen time and time again with teachers of some very challenging groups.

So, be a professional teacher, be a committed teacher but, in everybody’s interest, be a lazy one too and remember, as the Eskimo proverb says, ‘If you sweat, you die.’

Ian Gilbert, Dubai

* Kyriacou, C., Teacher stress and burnout: An international review, Educational Research . Vol 29(2), Jun 1987, 146–152.

Introduction

Have you ever had that niggling worry that the more effort you put into your lessons, the worse things become? Have you ever thought it wrong that you are the one crawling home on your knees at the end of the day whilst the students seem to find a new lease of life as soon as the bell goes? Does it ever cross your mind that this job means you only have holiday friends? That even the dog knows the term dates and when not to bother you?

Ever wondered if the hours and hours you spend every day on your teaching job could be time better spent? Ever thought there must be a better way?

Let me put it another way.

Have you ever wondered what would happen in your classroom if you simply stopped teaching? And I don’t mean pack the job in. I mean you just create a bit more space for the learners to get on and be more active as a result of your teaching.

You might be surprised if you did.

Over the last few decades the demands of countless education initiatives from across the whole political spectrum, not to mention the pressures good teachers put on themselves, have seen so much teaching squeezed into our lessons, they must have squeezed out some of the learning. And whilst you clearly need some teaching for learning to happen, there needs to be time for a response to the teaching, to help embed and make permanent the learning. And if all the time is taken up by the teacher, what is left for the learner?

In fact, such pressures might just be the reason that students who have been ‘boosted’ or ‘mentored’ or ‘targeted’ (or ‘EBacc-ed’) are still not progressing quite as we would want. Maybe if we spent a little less time teaching and gave students a little more time to learn, things would be different – especially if such an approach allowed for more opportunities to build relationships with the class and develop that all-important rapport with the individuals in it who might just need us most.

To summarise, what if we started with the expectation that we work less and the students, pupils, children (whatever you want to call them) work a whole lot more?

This is where the Lazy Way, as I like to call it, can help you get more out of your students and at the same time help you to get your life back. More than just a series of tricks, the Lazy Way is something I have put together over years of experience working with all sorts of learners (and teachers) who want their lessons to be different yet still be rewarded with academic success. It was an approach born out of my frustration with doing a job I love but being slowly killed by it in the process. And, as all good psychologists know, if necessity is the mother of invention then frustration is the absent father, and being knackered the grown-up sibling who just won’t leave home.

This was the premise when I wrote the first edition of this book, but now it’s no longer just my experiences I can call upon. My inbox constantly tells me that the ideas of the Lazy Way are in use in classrooms across the country and indeed worldwide. From being a lone warrior, battling the twin forces of endless planning and high academic expectations, I am now fighting side by side with a veritable army of fellow teachers, each of us determined to safeguard the territory you might know as ‘marking’ but that we should rightfully call ‘Sunday afternoon’.

I first realised that I needed to review my approach to teaching towards the end of my very first term in the job as I was waking up one day – a fact made all the more interesting as I was not actually in bed at the time but in an Indian restaurant. I had gone there with my housemates to celebrate my new job and had been overcome by the fatigue of being a teacher. My dining companions, who all had ‘proper’ jobs and chips on their shoulders about how long my holidays were, let me doze, much to the amusement of the staff and patrons of the Star of Bengal.

It was at this point I realised that if I was going to survive, let alone thrive, in this career then something had to give. And it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Friday nights out with my friends. And whilst ‘Friday night means curry night’ is not the mantra of my new housemates (or ‘wife and two children’, as they insist on being called), I would certainly never be excused from family taxi duties just because I’d had a busy week educating other people’s taxi passengers.

Although it’s been a while since I last came to with chicken patia in my ear, it still has to be said that teaching is, quite frankly, exhausting. No matter how far up the educational leadership ladder you go and how many summer holidays you’ve had, there really is no other word for it.

According to research I’ve either read or made up, the average classroom teacher makes more than 1,500 educational decisions every school day. That’s more than four decisions every minute and even more if you are cross-referencing what you are seeing with the latest educational research and deciding if you should propose a new school policy based on it. So, it is hardly surprising that teachers end the day on their knees. Add to that the fact that so much of our ‘spare time’ is given over to doing the bits of the job we don’t have time to do during the school day because we’re too busy teaching, and you can wave goodbye to any thoughts of pastimes, hobbies or a social life, let alone having the time to be even a half-decent partner or parent.

This is why I wasn’t very long into my teaching career before I knew that I had to do something differently. I had to come up with a plan B so I could succeed in this great job without letting the great job take over my life. I needed to find a way to work less but still do the right thing by my students. This was when an important point struck me: there are more of them than me! What if I divvied up the workload proportionally? What if I turned things upside down? What if I had them doing more of the work? Why was I the one busting a gut all the time running from the photocopier to the stock cupboard, handing out books and taking in homework as I went? Why was I constantly on the go whilst they just sat there? It was their education after all.

It was at that point, bitten by the twin radioactive spiders of resentment and fatigue, that my superhero alter ego ‘The Lazy Teacher’ was born. And what resentment and fatigue brought into being, educational research and ever higher academic expectations have ganged up on to make matters even more pressing. Knowing more about what ‘works’ (or ‘worked’ to give it its true title) coupled with the genuine desire to see ever more students achieve ever higher grades simply means the profession is being challenged to do more than ever before. All of which means that the need for us all to be lazy superheroes has never been greater.

But first, a word of explanation before you start writing letters to the Daily Mail or summoning the pedagogy police on Twitter. Can I clarify that I am not describing myself as lazy in a ‘couldn’t care less, take it or leave it, give me my pay cheque and I’m out of here’ sort of way. Far from it. I can honestly say that I have never stolen a living from the schools I have worked in and nor do the teachers I witness who have adopted this approach. After all, it takes a lot of effort to be lazy.

Although the strategies in this book mean that you could, if you wanted to, spend a great deal of time sitting in front of your class with your feet up, marvelling how coffee actually comes hot, this is not what the Lazy Way is all about. I’m the Lazy Teacher not the idle one.

Like so many of us, I am a dedicated and passionate teacher who sees the teacher’s job as doing all that is necessary to bring out the best in their students. But that’s just it. If the teacher does ‘all’ that is necessary, what’s left for the students to do? Maybe the more we play the professional, fully committed teacher card, the more of a disservice we do our students, never actually giving them the opportunity or desire to take control of the learning – their learning – themselves.

Instead of such a disservice, the Lazy Way genuinely seeks to raise standards, help students find a love of learning that will last them a lifetime and prevent half our current workforce leaving the profession because of stress. And whilst the book is merely a drop in the ocean when it comes to all that is going on in education today, it does seem to help. I have had countless conversations and emails about how the book was the starting point when it came to realigning an individual teacher’s approach to teaching and learning. Professionals have told me how it has been invaluable when they returned to work after time off with stress or serious illness.

The more you think about it, the more you will agree that being a Lazy Teacher helps avoid many of the problems dominating the profession. When you become a Lazy Teacher, you will employ a series of strategies and techniques that put the responsibility for learning directly and consistently onto the students. In doing so they learn to engage with their own learning, and not just with what they have learnt but with how they learnt it, giving them the skills and confidence to carry on learning tomorrow. And the next day. And the one after. In other words, it is not just the outcomes that are important but the process of learning itself.

The Lazy Teacher’s Handbook is my way of getting over to you that the Lazy Way is a gilt-edged opportunity for raising achievement in your classroom and having a life at the same time. So whilst I am happy to share with you as many techniques and strategies as I can squeeze into these pages, it is important for you to remember that they are just a starting point and you, like the countless professionals who read the first edition already have, can add your own ideas to the list of strategies all the time.

The most important thing is for you to take on board the Lazy Way for yourself and tweak it to match the needs of your learners – just like a chef might make variations to trusted recipes, depending on feedback. In doing so, the Lazy Way will start to permeate your own working practices and professional life. And when it does, you will be amazed how quickly you start to look at all aspects of your teaching with a fresh eye – a ‘lazy eye’ if you like (OK, maybe not). All the same, your new outlook will mean you are always on the lookout for ways that you can get students to do more of the work and benefit more in the process.

Each chapter in this book is devoted to a different topic covering the full gamut of teacher responsibility, from lazy ways to get the marking done to lazy language that actually helps build self-esteem. I even show you how to get your teaching assistants (if you have any left) involved in the whole lazy process. It’s not about giving you a step-by-step guide as, although I am lazy, I try never to be patronising. Given the simplicity of the ideas (being lazy is honestly not rocket science), I have every confidence that you will be able to take my ideas as a starting point and run with them. Or rather, take these ideas, hand them over to your students and sit back whilst they do the running. (See how it works?!)

What I can say now is that all of the ideas that follow have a proven track record both in my own classroom and in countless others globally – proven to get results in the academic sense but in other ways too. These fully road-tested ideas are in this book simply because the students have said they made a real difference to their learning, for example helping them get through the content quicker or making it more memorable