Friday morning. Whew, another week. They feel slow and fast both.

There are five blonde wood tables in the room, new purchases, it’s the beginning of a school year. No graffiti, no scratches, no loose legs, with matching blonde wood chairs and a card with a student name on each table. The large screen is projecting warm-up questions for journal writing under big words in the school’s official maroon branding:

Welcome back to ELA Literature and Reading!

The school logo is even in the upper left corner of the slide. This is an organized teacher. The door is shut, Mari tells me, so she can meet each student individually and have them put their phones away. There is light music without lyrics (I’m sure that is no coincidence) coming from her laptop.

The students enter, drop their phones in storage at the door, say hello to me. Start journaling. 

Many years ago I sat in this same room observing a teacher, Mark. We had talked quite a bit about giving the students time to learn during which we as teachers are not teaching. Or at least, not teaching how we usually think of teaching. We joked that things are going well if you can leave the classroom for a cup of coffee without the students realizing you have left. At some point during that class Mark left and got himself a cup of coffee. The students and I didn’t notice. When he came back into the room he hid his smile behind the cup as he saluted me with his raised eyebrows and laughing eyes. 

Mari could have left just now, as the students were journaling. Coffee cup. Teaching by organizing in such a way that you don’t have to teach, at least not in a lecture-y way. 

Next Monday the students are going to present in front of the class. So when the time for journal writing is finished, Mari asks the students to get up in front of the class. She takes a seat in the back of the class. Then they approach the “stage” she has created in the corner, defined by a carpet, and asks them to walk across it and look at her. Just some eye contact. Then they walk across the stage again, now laughing a little, feeling more confident, and they strike a silly pose. The tempo increases, Mari keeps up the applause as they cross the stage a third time. They’ve been asked to shout out a hello, which they do. “Hello!”

This is scaffolded practice to work on poise, on being in front of peers and others, on learning how to handle yourself when all eyes are on you, when you are the center of attention. A skill that goes far beyond ELA Literature and Reading. A skill that will come in handy in any class, any social situation, any job. 

The students move on to eye contact, and Mari asks them to move out into the hall to practice. No chance to settle into your chair and get bored here. They try three different exercises, I notice the students aren’t particularly comfortable, nor particularly good at this. It’s cultural, differences between countries, but there’s more. There are differences of ages, of who has the power. Being in the hall, moving, looking at each other (or not!) is excellent practice. So Poise, Eye Contact, and …

We come back into the room, the students stay standing. They practice reading from the board, without any gestures at all. No hand waving, no shifting from one foot to the other. Then they practice with just a few gestures, gestures that might help them make a point, might animate their presentations just a bit.

After gestures, Speed. How fast should you speak? Mari leads the students in some examples. First, they all read far too fast. It’s a jumble of student voices. It’s so obvious that this is not what to do. No one would present this fast, so it’s a little silly, which means it is also safe. Of course we don’t speak this fast! Then they practice presenting far too slowly. It’s painful, one word at a time. Ugh. No one would present that slow. Certainly not us! They finish by reading at a comfortable pace before reviewing the presentation skills they’ve practiced: Poise, Eye Contact, Gestures, Speed. 

Brilliant. So often we assign a student presentation but forget to provide any training. Then on presentation day it is, well, painful. These folks won’t be experts next Monday, but they’ll be a little removed from being pure novices. Monday’s class won’t be painful. And, I think to myself again, they are practicing, in this low intermediate English class, the stuff of life. 

The formal teaching, all quite informal actually, is over and the final slide is a to do list. The work for the rest of the hour is clear and self-guided. Mari moves from student to student. At the moment she is working with a boy from Tokyo, revising his writing. 

“Is that okay?” he asks. 

“That makes sense to me, yes.” 

“And this?” 

“Yes, but you have too many verbs here. Choose one of those verbs, no, that’s a noun, Mmmm…  that’s also a noun.” 

She smiles at him when he catches on, then moves to another student. 

“Yeeeeeees,” she says, when he shows her his work. She gives a quick piece of advice and moves on again.

It isn’t just the room that is organized. It’s the plan. Meet the students individually and get them working. Lead the students through exercises to practice presentation skills (and get them up out of their seats, even into the hall), scaffold so they are not embarrassed, smile and encourage, keep it moving. Then give students time in class to work individually. This could be homework, but then the teacher wouldn’t be there to help. This is in fact homework, just scaffolded, starting when the teacher is available, to be continued on one’s own later. 

Masterclass! Do the students know how lucky they are? (Probably not.) But I’m sure they feel seen and heard, they sense that they are productive, and when I imagine how they’ll encounter lesson after lesson like this over the course of this school year, I see students who are more proficient in English and far more confident. And taller, of course.