Keeping the Ball in the Air (or We Don’t Talk About Teacher Talk)
It was an amazing weekend at the TFA Summit.
Margaret Troyer (left), Baltimore ’03, and Kala Jones (right), Miami-Dade ’15, representing SERP at the TFA 35th Anniversary Summit in Las Vegas!
We got to hear from celebrities ranging from Lauryn Hill and Common to Governor Lombardo of Nevada.
But my favorite comment of the weekend came from Lin-Manuel Miranda.
I already knew that Lin-Manuel Miranda was an incredibly talented songwriter - and I say that despite the year I spent listening to “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” on repeat - but this weekend I learned that he was also a teacher. He worked as a long-term sub as his day job until his songwriting career took off.
He said that when he started substitute teaching, he was confident in his ability, as a performer, to “hold the room,” to keep kids’ attention. But then he said he realized that the best teachers actually talk very little, that the teacher’s job is to “keep the ball in the air” and get kids talking to each other. He said that sometimes the ball goes out of bounds, and the teacher has to hit it back in, but the goal is to get the conversation back on track and keep kids talking to each other.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
This resonated so deeply with one of SERP’s core values - that kids should be talking to each other, that the hallmark of a successful classroom is not lots of teacher talk, but lots of student talk. This is evident in
STARI, a discussion-based reading intervention for students in grades six and up who read two or more years below grade level, in SERP’s
apt! website, which is full of teacher tips for keeping that ball in the air and supporting academically productive discussions, and in SERP’s new professional learning course on
student discourse in grades K-2.
The TFA Summit was an inspiring and exhausting day and a half, and I am rejuvenated as I settle back into my work supporting an amazing group of educators committed to keeping that ball in the air. (And that’s why coffee is for grownups.)