June 2009

If only students would STOP raising

their hands
By Joe Bower
We must constantly remind ourselves that the ultimate purpose of evaluation
is to enable students to evaluate themselves.
~Art Costa

Hollywood loves the traditional school story. Weve all seen the movie or the
television show where the caring teacher struggles to reach underachieving, sweat-hog
students. At first, the teacher tries to deliver daily instruction while the students
misbehavior shows us their contempt for all things learning. Through nothing short of an
emotional roller coaster plot, the teacher finally reaches students, and in the end, we
measure those students successes by the rigidity in their posture and the height of their
fingertips.

Private educational companies have sprouted up all over North America,
advertising that your childs learning will improve one full grade level, if you sign up
today! Their television ads play like a before and after view of your child. First is a child
with an infinitely long frown, struggling with the parent at the kitchen table, as the
nightly homework fight plays itself out. But with a little corporate help, your child could
be that student at the end of the advertisement you know, the one who is beaming with
pride, his arm reaching for the sky, while he waits with feigned patience for the teacher to
call on him. We all know that good learning is represented by the number of times a
student can raise his hand, respond with a correct answer, and be praised by the teacher
or is it?

If you were to walk through a school and peek into the classrooms, you would
find a plethora of consistencies. For the most part, students are in desks, lined up in rows,
and raising their hands. Whether you are a six-year-old in kindergarten learning how to
write your name, or you are a seventeen-year-old in high school learning the difference
between capitalism and communism, you are very likely expected to raise your hand, if
you want an opportunity to contribute to the discussion. A principal who walks the
hallways of her school to find classroom after classroom full of students throwing their
digits toward the ceiling might be pleased to see such well organized and seemingly
productive conversations taking place.

Raising your hand has become such a no-brainer for teachers that I would
encourage educators to rethink this traditional practice. After all, routinely questioning
ones practices and pedagogy is an admirable professional quality, and it could be said to
be even more important to question the things we have begun to take for granted - the
things we mindlessly accept as obvious truths.

When evaluating our practices, typically the first question to ask is why are we
doing this? Too often educators simply rethink the how how can we do this better,
but the how is simply too narrow of a focus. It assumes we should be doing the this in
the first place. Rather than asking, how can I get my students to raise their hands, we
should be asking why do I want my students to raise their hands. What is the purpose of
such an expectation? Most teachers would agree that students are expected to raise their
hand so that the teacher may facilitate class discussions in a more effective and efficient,
orderly manner. This seems like a very non-controversial idea. Teachers may disagree on
a long range of education topics, but it should be safe to assume that all would agree on
this, shouldnt it?

Lets evaluate some of the reasons why we have students raise their hands:
Maintain an orderly discussion where the students know whose turn it
is to talk.
Avoid blurting and interruptions
Ensure that all participate and then balance that participation
Allow the teacher to use discretion when selecting who gets to speak
Maintaining a well planned and time sensitive lesson plan
Maintain a quiet classroom

Some of these are admirable goals, while some may require further inspection.
For example, the need for a quiet classroom may be more for the teachers own selfish
needs than for the students learning, but thats another discussion. The purpose here is to
evaluate whether having students raise their hands actually achieves these objectives in
the way we would want them to.

Why is it that so many students continue to have a hard time adopting proper
discussion skills, despite being inundated with the hands rule for as long as 12 years?
Why do some students still not wait their turn to talk? Why do some continue to dominate
the conversation, while giving others little to no opportunity to have their say? Or others
remain silent and rarely ever speak up?

The good news is that the answers to these questions are not as nebulous as we
might fear. The bad news is that it may be more our fault than we might like to admit.
The blame may lie in that no-brainer, raise-your-hand strategy that we so mindlessly
accepted as an obvious truth. Most teachers teach the way they were taught. It was good
enough (or bad enough) for me, so its good enough (or bad enough) for my students.

I re-evaluated my use of the raise-your-hand strategy a few years ago when I
realized that I was the one benefiting the most from its implementation. As the teacher, I
was the one making all the decisions. I was doing all the thinking. I was deciding when a
student was sharing too much or too little. I decided who got to talk. I decided if a student
had said enough. I decided to allow the quiet student to speak instead of calling on
another who had already shared multiple times that class. I decided I think you get the
point. Students will not learn to make good decisions vicariously through my decision
making skills. They have to have the opportunity to make these decisions for themselves.

To further my point, I will share a situation that occurred in my classroom on the
first day I introduced my stop-raising-your-hand strategy.

After I introduced the idea to my students of not raising their hands
during a discussion, we embarked on what I knew would be a difficult
discussion. I knew it wouldnt be the topic that would cause trouble, but rather it
would be that the students couldnt depend on me to run the discussion. I wasnt
going to be the thinker and do-er for them. They were going to have to figure
out a way to have a discussion without running to me for a solution.

The discussion began about the difference between the concepts of
Standard of Living and Quality of Life, but trouble began immediately when
Johnny and Sally both started to share a thought out loud with the class. They
both kept talking, one getting louder than the other as they continued to stare me
down, in a desperate race for my attention. When they were done, no one in the
class understood anything either one of them said. It was chaotic.

An observer might be tempted to judge this little experiment of mine as a failure,
and that I should just go back to what we know even some of the kids facial
expressions were portraying this message.

Rather than just go back to raising hands, I asked myself, what did I just learn
from this? It would be easy to assume that the lesson here was that we need hands to
avoid chaos; however, I came to realize that there was a far more accurate and pressing
lesson to be learned. Johnny and Sally didnt stop once they realized they were both
speaking over one another (if they realized it at all). I also realized that they never looked
at each other, recognizing the other as a potential speaker or listener. Instead they plowed
on with what they wanted to say, competing for my attention.

What should Sally and Johnny have done? What would have been the respectful
thing for them to do? In the adult world, we dont have a discussion moderator waiting to
pounce on two individuals who happen to speak up at the same time. Rather, those
individuals would be responsible for themselves. They would stop, look at each other,
and one of them would ask the other to proceed. I think we could assume that none of this
entered Johnny or Sallys minds. And that is the problem. Students have been trained so
well to play the raise-your-hand game, that they know it is the teachers responsibility to
facilitate the conversation. Students simply sit at their desks in a waiting pattern, patiently
or impatiently waiting for the teacher to give the okay. This isnt good enough. If we
really want to teach children how to conduct a proper discussion, we need to teach them
to think for themselves and to think about other people.


Back to my story:

Once Johnny and Sally stopped, I asked them who should go first.
Johnny said in a half serious, half joking manner, Ladies first. I wasnt
entirely pleased with this response. I mean, do we really want the default to be
that the girls always get to go first? (I hope we would all see this as no more
proper than to always let the tall kids go first.) So I asked for more solutions.
Thats when Ahmad said, Sally shared a lot during math class, but Johnny
didnt say anything.

Sally agreed that she had indeed shared a lot during math and quickly
looked to Johnny and told him to go ahead. Johnny shared, and the conversation
went around the room. It was more than a little awkward as the students tried to
facilitate a full class discussion on their own, for perhaps the first time.

I continued to guide the conversation by asking questions, and it was
becoming clear to everyone (except Martin) that Martin was taking over the
conversation. He was taking great personal pride in being able to respond to my
questions, and he didnt even have to wait for the teacher to say he could talk.
The other students were becoming frustrated and annoyed with Martins
hogging of the discussion. But they werent just frustrated with Martin, they
were becoming frustrated with me, because I wasnt doing anything about it.
I asked Martin if he knew that others wanted to share. He admitted that
he knew that Molly wanted to say something, so I asked Martin if Molly should
get to share. I was more than a little shocked to hear Martin say NO! I was
fascinated by this response.
Martin explained, Well, I think Molly has the same answer as me, and
I dont want her to say it before me.
I asked him, What matters more that the answer is shared regardless
of who says it, or that you say it.
Martin, without a moment of hesitation, replied, That I say it.
Another boy in the back then blurted, Dont be so selfish.
Martin turned red in the face and sniped back, Im not being selfish.
Despite this reaction, I could see that he had registered a disturbing thought
maybe he was being selfish.

Again, an observer might dub this whole thing a failure, that this set back
only reinforced the need for hands. But, I wasnt convinced. I was still excited about the
affect Ahmads comment had on Sally, and I was determined to gain similar results with
Martin. This exchange with Martin evoked a couple thoughts.

Firstly, because the hands rule was removed, Martin just assumed he had a blank
cheque, and he had every intention of cashing it in. He was bound and determined to get
his share, and more, of the discussion. After all, it appeared there was nothing to stop
him. And thats the problem according to Martin, if the teacher wasnt going to audit
his participation, he assumed that left no one to curb his desire to dominate the
discussion. There should have been someone, and that someone should have been Martin.
With the raise-your-hand rule, he never had to think about his level of participation. All
he had to do was raise his hand and wait. He never had to think about what a fair level of
participation might look like, or why it might matter in the first place; the teacher did all
that for him.

Secondly, Martin has come to see class discussions as a competition for the
teachers attention; after all, it is the teacher who is doling out the grades, the assessments
and the verbal praise. Why wouldnt he do everything in his power to attain those
goodies? Class discussions have become a fishing expedition for the right answers. The
smart kids pillage their way to the correct answers while the dumb kids run and hide,
living in fear that they might have to say something. Martin needs to say it first so that he
can win. This second point is not limited to the raise-your-hand rule; its the atmosphere
that is created by the teacher. Discussions should act more like a brain-storming session
where students can construct their ideas by sharing and listening with others, and then
reconstruct their ideas because they are sharing and listening with others. I think the
essence of this point can be summarized best by Harry S. Truman who said, It is
amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

By having class discussions, teachers would most likely agree that we would hope
that students are learning the answers to these questions:
How do I know when to stop listening and start talking?
How do I know when to stop talking and start listening?
How do I know when it is my turn to talk?
How do I balance my talking with my listening?
How do I know when a discussion should start?
How do I know when a discussion should end?

With the raise-your-hand rule, who is asking these questions? Who is left to
answer them? Who is afforded the opportunity to act on these questions? Sadly, often the
only person who really thinks about these questions is the teacher. Not often enough are
the students encouraged to seriously ask these questions, nor are they given the chance to
construct and reconstruct their answers.

But there is hope. If we provide students with an opportunity to answer these
questions, they will hone their discussion skills. This doesnt mean teachers take on a
completely hands-off strategy. Kids still need support. They still need someone to guide
them to the answers to these questions, and the best way to guide children is to provide
them the freedom to make mistakes. So go try it. Try and remove the raise-your-hands
rule. It will be messy, but give it a chance, and you wont be disappointed.