Teaching Like a Champion II

SLANT and STAR

SLANT is an instruction given to students either at the beginning of lessons or during transitions. It is an acronym for the following set of instructions: sit up, listen, ask and answer, nod, track the teacher. It was originated in the charter chain KIPP (Knowledge is Power^[1]) Schools.

Let us first speak of the rationale behind it. It reduces five instructions to just the one and is therefore ‘efficient’. It has maximum efficiency. Maximum efficiency is displayed when we SLANT. The efficiency of this technique is total.^[2] The instruction was displayed in pretty well every one of the videos of ‘Teach Like a Champion’ that I sat through so the students, who clearly would have picked up what it meant through repetition, could be reminded of what it means should they have had a complete memory meltdown and found themselves in any doubt.

The issue with it is that some of the instructions are pointless and some seem bordering on abusive.

· Sit up – OK.

· Listen – OK. But I want to be able to do more than just this.

· Ask and answer – Compulsorily? And if I don’t know the answer? And if I am delicate? If I have special needs? If I am neurodiverse?

· Nod – You’re joking! This is silly.

· Track the teacher – Why? Sometimes, I look away when I am thinking and processing the knowledge. It’s a nice day outside. I like to look at the butterflies as they flutter past. It doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention. I’m still listening. Why must I have only one compulsory focus on the person at the front?

I’ve taught students who have been trained (and trained is what it is) in what might be satirised as ‘the Pavlovian method’, and it can be disconcerting. Having a student watching you every moment of the lesson and nodding at you all the time becomes comedic, and I’ve had to tell children to stop doing this in the past. But there are more serious issues with it than its comedy, and they aren’t enormously funny. Treating the human body as an object that does not belong to anyone and having a method with which to control that object is suggestive of a certain darkness.

Doug writes in defence of SLANT, that no matter how super the lesson is, “if students aren’t alert, sitting up, and actively listening, teaching it will be like pouring water into a leaky bucket.”^[3] Regardless of whether the metaphor here sits on the right side of cliché or not, it’s not entirely true: “alert”, probably; “sitting up”, possibly though not necessarily; “actively listening” - listening is important, of course (though we can have off days for reasons outside of school); the adverb “actively” may well be meaningless if it is just a justification for complete control over students’ posture and gaze. Doug goes onto make the claim that the technique is “a critical part”^[4] of a classroom that is functioning well. This is bold and seems to imply that it is impossible to have a high performing classroom without use of this, at best, questionable piece of practice. Well, here’s the news, kids: effective classrooms existed long before the rise of ‘Teach Like a Champion’.

He also claims that SLANT makes “compliance visible.”^[5] This is not the kind of language anyone who is in any way sensible would want a teacher of children to employ. The reasonable desire for order that has completely forgotten itself here. Compliance is something to be enforced (or else), and it is the basest level of conformity it is possible for any human being to grudgingly assent to. For instance, where a uniform policy for teachers insists I wear a tie, I’ll comply, but it does not mean that I, in any way, accept the instruction as rational, nor regard its imposition as anything other than illogical, unthinking and rude. As Sue Gerard says in her excellent ‘Logical Incrementalism’ blog, “everyone knows ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are tokens, and they’re easy to use even if you actually feel no obligation or gratitude whatsoever.”^[6] You can comply and hate both the instruction and the instructor at the same time. And why do people comply? Because they are frightened of punishment: no other reason. No one complies happily.

SLANT has now been discontinued in the schools that originated it. Dave Levin, CEO of KIPP Schools, published the following clearly heartfelt, sincere and considered apology when writing of allegations of white supremacy in the network.

“The most common example of this is discipline practices that center on compliance and control and have not consistently and constructively affirmed, uplifted, and celebrated your identities, your families, your communities, and our Black and Latinx staff.”^[7]

This apology came about as black alumni from the schools who’d returned to work in them had complained of their profound discomfort at having had their bodies controlled by white people and, when they returned as teachers, found that their career development was sometimes blocked by the same. Clearly, all professional organisations have issues from time to time, and Levin was brave enough to acknowledge those of the organisation he leads, but having black former students identify that an organisation that was set up to emancipate them was, against its own clear-hearted intent, actually specialising in “compliance and control” and that, by implication “systemic racism, inequities and anti-Blackness” were present in the day-to-day practices of the schools and that these caused black students “pain, hurt, and anger” is serious.^[8]

He did well to cancel the approach, and I would suggest that any school that still considers it a useful shorthand consider doing the same as its originators have rightly done, immediately; tomorrow, if necessary, but certainly no later than next week.

STAR

Perhaps in partial acknowledgement of the controversy surrounding SLANT, perhaps in conceding that some minor errors had been committed in order to deflect any attention from the systemic issues with the pedagogic regime he’d helped found, Lemov coined a new acronym – STAR: sit up, track the teacher, appreciate your classmates’ ideas, rephrase the words of the person who spoke so they know you were listening.

So, the command to nod at all times initially seems to have disappeared, and the idea of appreciating other people’s ideas seems sweet, but we are still enforcing complete control over the way in which children sit; we are still controlling the students’ gazes; and the final command is, again, a Pavlovian instruction that seems to misunderstand the organic nature of classroom interactions.^[9]

What is the point of a compulsory instruction as to exactly how to respond to your classmates? This is not how authentic communication works. This is not freedom of expression. This is not freedom of any type. It is its opposite. Classroom conversations cannot be as prescribed as this; children need to be able to express themselves freely, to investigate ideas, to respond to each other in the manner they see fit. For student discussion to operate in a properly nourishing way, it needs to have a degree of freedom, a concept that appears to be anathema to the supporters of ‘Teach Like a Champion’. It’s plausible that one might use this as a technique from time to time, though I can’t say I’ve ever had cause to employ anything similar as it would feel mechanistic, but to prescribe that all classroom conversations follow exactly this model is to fundamentally misunderstand the complex relational skill of managing classroom discussion and to misunderstand how human expression works.

Doug and I had an initially relatively heated exchange via direct messaging on Twitter before he blocked me some time later, and he pointed me in the direction of what he currently thinks about what one might describe as ‘attentional training’. It is called ‘Tracking in Classrooms: What I Really Think (and Wrote)’. In it, he writes of a technique he calls ‘Habits of Attention’ that it is about building and enforcing routines in class so that the students “build stronger attentional habits.”^[10]

We head in the direction of the video Doug suggests you watch in which the classroom culture you see is described by Doug as “fun and funny and scholarly”. I’d venture an opinion that it isn’t. Yes, there is subject content, but the experience appears highly uncomfortable for the children, and the pace is exhausting. Doug argues that enforcing children to turn and face the speaker in what appears to be quite a militaristic manner promotes “pro-social”^[11] body language. There is theory here, but what is communicated in the video is the system’s complete control of the children in it. He asks us to consider how “attentive, confident and productive they are.”^[12] This is not a conclusion anyone experienced might draw from such evidence.

They are forced to wiggle their finger in a show of appreciation of what one speaker says. This system of teaching forces children to do things that are totally pointless, and one wonders whether this is the intent: if you can make a whole system full of children do something pointless, in the words of Lady Macbeth, “what cannot you and I perform …?”^[13]

Referencing books with titles as frightening as ‘Atomic Habits’, Doug explains his justification for the nodding and tracking:

“Engaging in behaviors that show a speaker that you are listening carefully – nodding, for example, and looking interested – are often self-actualizing. They cause you to pay better attention and cause the speaker to feel a strong sense of affirmation and belonging as well.”^[14]

Where is the academic research or, indeed, any form of research to back this up? Having where you look being put under strict military control, and recall here that in the military, when, for instance, there is a march past, there is strict control of gaze (“eyes right”), will apparently “cause you to pay better attention and cause the speaker to feel a strong sense of affirmation and belonging as well.”^[15] It feels ‘sciency’ but isn’t science and, as I’ve said, I’ve taught children who had been trained in this manner. It didn’t cause any sense of affirmation. It just freaked me out.

He describes the teacher in the videos as “deft”. I’d disagree. There are also a lot of modal verbs in it. There are direct, provable causations in a classroom and, when you have years of experience, you’ve tried the ‘could’ and replaced it with ‘does’ or ‘does not’.

He makes the error that many people make about eye contact that we use it to “show someone that they matter and belong.” This is an un-evidenced assertion. Prolonged direct eye contact is an evolutionary signal that you are going to hit someone. I agree that both these areas need to be the focus of teacher attention, but the focus should be on the teacher’s use of body language and lack of eye contact and how this should be managed so as not to prompt animal responses in students. Not making eye contact is often the key.

It is chock full to the brim of un-evidenced claims, and the references are all to popular science and psychology, not to genuine academic research.^[16] “You don’t learn well if you’re slouching.”^[17] How does Doug know this? I am having quite an enjoyable slouch while I am typing this, and I’m learning quite a bit. On the nodding bit of SLANT, he claims that nodding your head “shows interest in another person’s ideas, it also causes you to engage actively in listening.” I would argue that it causes you to look like you are being controlled, forced into compliance. And compulsory nodding has not disappeared from the instructions either; it is merely concealed, a switchblade behind an arras, and appended to the ‘Appreciate Your Classmates’ Ideas’ section with the instruction that a child must do so by “nodding, smiling, and so on when they speak.” And here we are again: the compulsory instruction to smile. You will show your happiness (even if you are so profoundly and deeply unhappy at being controlled that you are suffocating).

It is clearly emancipatory in intent. But what it intends and what it appears to be are opposites. Doug has the good grace to appreciate the concept of the “psychological safety” of the children being paramount, but I question whether students feel even remotely psychologically safe in these classrooms. Enforced compliance does not make people feel safe; it makes them feel hurt and panicked and resentful. I’ve touched on the concept of psychological safety earlier: in order to feel it we must feel included, allowed to asked questions in order to learn, contribute ideas and be able to challenge the status quo while not being ridiculed or punished for doing so. Are the students subject to such a regime allowed all of the above?

When in a situation in which we fear the judgement of others who are above us in some hierarchy, we seek the pallid version of safety that is found in ‘neutral compliance’. Inside, we may be agonised, but we may not express that agony as expression of any idea outside of the orthodoxy becomes punishable. An authoritarian environment does not want ideas. Ideas are dangerous. They call established orthodoxies into question.

The fact that ‘Teach Like a Champion’ and its notions of students and lessons being subject to ‘efficiencies’ has risen during a period of right-wing government is not un-coincidental, and the further fact that influential voices support it assertively, dismissing any objection without the need to properly rationalise their support for the text leads one to believe that you do not have to be an expert in anything much to be highly rated by recent governments.

What is mystifying is the association of the book with the evidence-led, ‘research informed’ movement since Lemov himself, in a section called ‘The Irony of What Works’, outlines that the techniques espoused in the book, while based on a study of American teachers from a highly specific tradition who get ‘uncommon’ results for their students, do not match to much of the theoretical basis of teaching. There is nothing whatsoever about cognitive science in the book, and it seems an odd marriage: one of the vanguards of a movement that would describe itself as research informed and evidence-led has done only a version of ethnographic research in an anthropologically unique system, has done little evident reading (there are 12 references in the whole book) and recommends only one extremely specific style of teaching.

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^[1] This statement is true. It also includes knowledge of who is using you and for what ends.

^[2] “What saves us is efficiency – the devotion to efficiency” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, (Penguin Popular Classics: London, 1902) p10.

^[3] Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College pp360-361.

^[4] Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College p361.

^[5] Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College p388.

^[6] Logical Incrementalism, Michaela: Duty, Loyalty and Gratitude 5 September 2020. https://logicalincrementalism.wordpress.com/2020/09/05/michaela-duty-loyalty-and-gratitude/

^[7] Dave Levin, A Letter from Dave Levin to KIPP Alumni 18 June 2020 https://www.kipp.org/news/a-letter-from-dave-levin-to-kipp-alumni/

^[8] Dave Levin, A Letter from Dave Levin to KIPP Alumni 18 June 2020 https://www.kipp.org/news/a-letter-from-dave-levin-to-kipp-alumni/

^[9] Though Doug does acknowledge that you can drop this bit if you so wish. In which case …?

^[10] Lemov, Doug, Tracking in Classrooms: What I Really Think (and Wrote) 5 April 2023 https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/tracking-in-classrooms-what-i-really-think-and-wrote/

^[11] Lemov, Doug, Tracking in Classrooms: What I Really Think (and Wrote) 5 April 2023 https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/tracking-in-classrooms-what-i-really-think-and-wrote/

^[12] Lemov, Doug, Tracking in Classrooms: What I Really Think (and Wrote) 5 April 2023 https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/tracking-in-classrooms-what-i-really-think-and-wrote/

^[13] Shakespeare, William, Macbeth Act I, Scene VII

^[14] Lemov, Doug, Tracking in Classrooms: What I Really Think (and Wrote) 5 April 2023 https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/tracking-in-classrooms-what-i-really-think-and-wrote/

^[15] Lemov, Doug, Tracking in Classrooms: What I Really Think (and Wrote) 5 April 2023 https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/tracking-in-classrooms-what-i-really-think-and-wrote/

^[16] Some irony here, no?

^[17] Lemov, Doug, Tracking in Classrooms: What I Really Think (and Wrote) 5 April 2023 https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/tracking-in-classrooms-what-i-really-think-and-wrote/