Teach Like Nobody’s Watching
Overall verdict: ★ ★ ★ ★
Why this book?
If you’ve ever heard Mark Enser speak (& I highly recommend you do!) you’ll know that he has three firm beliefs with regards to teaching:
1. Teaching is, at its heart, simple.
2. Teaching has become over complicated.
3. But to do the simple art of teaching well is complex.
These three beliefs permeate every page of this excellent book and you find yourself nodding along to Mark’s stripped back, common sense approach.
Below is perhaps my favourite quote from the whole book and one that really made me chuckle:
‘The days of tricking kids into learning are behind us and we can instead just let our subjects shine’ (p.25)
Tricking kids into learning? Yep… that just about sums it up… Sometimes you really have to laugh at the madness of education myths and fads. But jokes aside, how do we avoid these and move on from such madness?
For many, Mark’s mantra to ‘teach like nobody is watching’ will require some deep thought and reflection. What would you do if you were completely free to get on with it? If your practice wasn’t distorted by initiatives that are for the benefit of outside visitors rather than the pupils? This book reminded me that to genuinely teach effectively and efficiently, you need to consider every element of your practice from the start of your lessons to the homework you set, from your subject knowledge to your behavioural expectations. I knew that, we all do, but sometimes it can get forgotten amongst the madness of school life.
What I particularly loved about this book is how Mark seemingly covered every element of school life and every topical education debate out there yet each one is done with skilful nuance. For example, when discussing questioning (p.46) he challenges the myth that closed questioning is automatically deemed a lesser form of questioning than open questions. Later in the book, he bravely suggests that not all trips and fieldtrip are inherently valuable and worthwhile. Rather, we need to think carefully about what we are hoping to achieve from a trip and the opportunity costs involved. It is these nuanced discussions that makes this book so applicable to the real-life classrooms that we all teach in- I highly recommend reading this book!
Three key takeaways:
Retrieval practice does not simply mean going back over something; it is about actively trying to recall something from our long-term memory. It is the ‘actively trying’ bit that we must not lose sight of!
We must be willing to slow down in our classrooms; to take time to look back (at previous content) instead of always hurtling towards the future.
‘If you see teachers working like nobody’s watching, you see natural storytellers. The best teachers hold their class enthralled as the story of their subject is brought to life in the pupils’ heads through the use of carefully planned narratives.’ (p.45)