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cuppacocoa
January 19, 2015

don't answer the questionI once observed a teacher leading a large class of students. I could tell she didn’t have much experience teaching for a number of reasons, but one of the most obvious was that she kept getting derailed. A lot. She would be mid-sentence when a kid would suddenly shoot their hand in the air. It caught her off-guard with the urgency of a text message, and she took the bait every time. Even if she was working toward a main point, she allowed the hand to slice her words mid-sentence as she responded, “–Yes?”

The urgent hand waving in the air won her attention, and eventually, everyone else’s. After a series of similar interruptions, she soon lost the interest of all of the students and spent the rest of the lesson struggling to get it back (unsuccessfully). It was a disaster.

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