I attended a training for Sunday school teachers this past weekend, and came across the most unexpected piece of advice: don’t make eye contact with the students.
Wait, what?? Did I hear that correctly? Don’t make eye contact?
Yet I knew inside, even as I wondered this, that it was exactly what the instructor meant. Because as I thought back to her slow and deliberate model lesson earlier that day, I remembered that she had indeed kept her eyes down on the materials and on her hands the entire time. It had been calming and strangely entrancing.
But it was still very counter-intuitive for me. She went on to explain, “This will be especially hard for those of you who come from a teaching background.”
Yes.
“You’re used to making eye contact to keep the students engaged and to make sure they are paying attention. You need to release your students from that. Release them from that. If they are trying too hard to look at you to show you they are paying attention, then they won’t be able to see the lesson and focus as well.”
Hrh. I guess that made sense, in a sad, ironic sort of way: The effort I put into helping them stay focused could be the very thing that took away from their complete focus.
Interesting.
“Release them from that,” she repeated, “You have to release them from that so they can be free to be completely engaged. If you make eye contact with them, they get tense and worried that you’re going to ask them a question to check if they are paying attention, so instead of focusing, they’re busy worrying about how to prove that they have been paying attention.”
Hrh. That’s exactly what I did to my students. I mean, I called it “keeping them on their toes,” but maybe the very process of keeping them on their toes kept them from fully engaging in their hearts, souls, and minds.
HMM.
Interesting.
She elaborated, “Too often we are concerned with having them produce something to prove they learned something. When you make eye contact, they think they will have to produce an answer to prove that they are listening. Release them from that.”
It wasn’t the only time she mentioned this concept of us forcing students to produce something to prove their learning, and I knew I was 100% guilty of this practice. I had it ingrained in me from years of teaching in the classroom. As public school teachers, we were supposed to teach to the standards, and we were supposed to be able to point to student work and say, “LOOK, this student’s work is meeting so many standards! Here is a ton of work to prove it.”
In the classroom, producing stuff to prove learning was the name of the game. I was always looking for evidence that the students were learning the content I was trying to get across, whether through verbal answers, written work, listening in on conversations between students, or closely observing their process in a science lesson. Wasn’t that my job as a teacher? To make sure that things were being learned?
Apparently not. Well, not always. Maybe sometimes, my job is to simply let the student be fully immersed, and to offer them the freedom and space to soak up whatever they want to soak up- not what I think they should be soaking up.
This may be especially true in the context of introducing children to God. In so many Sunday school rooms, the children are expected to hear a story and then leave with a take-home point to repeat to their parents- “God loves me,” or “Love your neighbor,” or “Put others first.” They’re not bad ideas, but maybe there is a more effective way to point kids to real and living God.
Teaching academic content to children is not- cannot- be the same as introducing children to a real and living God. Does it benefit the child more to say, “Here, learn these facts and take home this knowledge about God,” or to offer them a place and space to freely engage in an experience and walk away with… whatever they walk away with? We have to consider what would benefit children more as we prepare them for (hopefully) a lifelong relationship with Him. Children may not always emerge with the ability to verbalize what was impressed upon them, but that’s not always the point, is it?
Have any of you tried this? How has it worked for you? I feel like if the content is naturally intriguing and presented well, it could work wonderfully. I’ve seen it happen. But we all know there are those lessons that nobody is that excited to teach, but still need to be presented. What then?
Don’t make eye contact. Don’t make them produce work to prove anything to you. Release them from that. It’s a drastically different way of approaching instruction than I’m used to, but I find myself wanting to hear more.
6 responses to “Don’t Make Eye Contact with Your Students”
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I love the idea but how would it work in practice do you think? What would a Sunday school lesson without learning facts look like? How can we help our kids encounter God?
So this philosophy was actually part of a bigger training on Godly Play, a program that we’ve been looking into for our children’s program. The Sunday school lesson is really different than what I grew up with (i.e. David C. Cook pull outs and coloring pages). It is a lot more about storytelling and providing an experience for children, with the hopes that they encounter and soak in as much as they can about God. They take a lot from the Montessori style of teaching, and give kids a lot of choice afterward to process everything.
There are still definitely stories and facts taught, but less in a direct instruction style and more in a storytelling method. If you watch a sample lesson on youtube, it might give you a better idea of how it could look like. Hope that helps!
(I thought about sharing more about it in the post but didn’t want it to become a post about the Godly Play program, but more about some of the philosophies that I was exposed to through the training 🙂 BTW we haven’t committed to the program, and are still discussing exploring the possibility of it).
This is an intriging thought for me as a trained elementary teacher as well as a Bible storyteller who trusts the Spirit to touch hearts. Is this a part of trusting him to speak through me? Something to ponder and maybe attempt to put into practice. During the last story I told, each child was holding some play doh…..and most were listening intently while their hands stayed busy. Thanks for sharing.
What a fun idea to allow the kids to hold play dough! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Let me know how it turns out if you try it! I’m really curious to know.
I’m a 4th grade teacher. I believe there is so much more to having eye contact with another human being than just making sure they’re paying attention. The affect of avoiding eye contact creates a disengagement which encourages emotional disconnect. Technology already creates an atmosphere of disinterest in what the face of the person on the other end of the conversation is revealing. If we do as this writer suggests, we will eventually pay with a society of disconnected individuals who can no longer interpret facial expressions and the depth of feelings being expressed. Teaching is modeling and we need students to see what our face looks like as we engage deeply with them. I guess that’s what breaks my heart when I see parents in restaurants chatting with their significant other or on their cell phone as their child is kept entertained with technology.
Ah YES of course, I completely agree with you. I wrote this assuming it was my usual readers that would be reading and responding, so of course you don’t know a whole lot about me and where I’m coming from. I used to be a 4th grade teacher too, and one thing I always emphasized and expected from my students was eye contact. We had a good amount of discussions and practice around social skills, including making eye contact, reflecting what others are saying, etc. I completely agree that they need to learn to make that connection and that there are a lot more reasons for eye contact beyond making sure they are paying attention. Sorry if that’s what I made it sound like in this post- I can see why you would think that.
I have also had my concerns regarding the overuse of technology and screen time, and totally know what you mean about families in restaurants appearing disconnected with each other (and oftentimes connected to the Internet instead). I am ALL FOR making personal, emotional, and social connections, and stopping eye contact completely was not at all what I was trying to suggest here.
I should probably add a note to the bottom of this post or something to clarify that the purpose of this post was to consider the completely counter-intuitive idea that sometimes, in some very specific situations, no eye contact could be a beneficial thing. It’s just something I had never thought about, and was so surprising to me I wanted to mull over it some more. For example, when you are telling students a story and want to allow them to get completely wrapped up in it without distractions, this might be a good time to consider looking down at the props, the figures, the book, or something else more vs. looking them in the eye. I still agree that other times (most of the time), it’s important and good to maintain eye contact and make that connection!
As I tried to understand this idea better, I thought of one example from my own personal teaching experience. We used to set aside 15 minutes for read alouds from chapter books after lunch in the afternoons. A lot of my students used to look forward to this, and it was a favorite part of the day for many. After thinking about this eye contact thing and how students are “free to engage,” it gave me a new lens to understand why so many students seemed so relaxed and enjoyed the read aloud so much. While I did still pause throughout reading to talk with them about the text, clarifying, commenting, and asking questions, my eyes were away from them more than usual and I think this gave them the freedom to get lost in the story without worrying so much about focusing for the purpose of answering any comprehension questions or anything.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and share your concerns, and I hope that helps explain a little bit more!