An important promise I make to myself and to my students is that we will never do busywork in my classroom.
We'll be busy, for sure. Time is precious, the fruits of learning are priceless, and you only learn by doing work with care.
But it won't be busywork.
Here it's helpful to have a conversation with your students about what busywork is. I even like to ask them to define busywork.
The definitions we arrive at come down to these kinds of things:
- Work assigned for the purpose of keeping students busy versus helping students learn
- Work that I'm doing but I don't know why I'm doing it or how it's going to help me long-term
- Work where the teacher removes themself completely from the learning process and is not there to check for understanding and intervene where needed
- Work that is mindlessly simple or lengthy
So you'll notice that busywork has less to do with being busy in a classroom than it does with:
- Lack of clarity of purpose (Everest Statements and Mini-Sermons help here)
- Lack of teacher presence (checking for understanding, intervening when students are struggling, provoking and answering questions)
- Lack of a proper “fit” for students
- Lack of the teacher's will to teach (e.g., “I'm just going to keep them busy today” versus “I'm going to help them grow today”)
We need our classes to develop the ability to be busy about the business of learning. After all, that's why we're here. But it can help our Credibility a lot if we take time periodically to differentiate what we are doing from the negative instances of busywork that students have experienced.
Teaching right beside you,
P.S. Here's a short video I made on this topic.
P.P.S. Focused Finish seminar happens next week! Register yourself or your team here!