The Skillful Teacher

particularly true for students who are relative novices in the subject
area, or who are from class, cultural, or racial backgrounds where
speaking out and giving your personal opinion is viewed as egoma-
nia, as getting a bit above yourself, or even an act of cultural suicide.
Where such students are concerned, a gradual, much longer period
of initiation into central concepts and building blocks of knowledge
prior to discussion will be what most helps their learning.
As economic challenges force many colleges to adopt what is
virtually an open admissions policy, students in our classes are likely
to represent an ever more bewildering diversity of racial, class, and
cultural identities. They will also probably exhibit widely varying
levels in their readiness to learn, their intellectual acuity, and their
previous experience in the subject. In such a cauldron of difference,
there will be very few standardized practices that help students
across the board learn essential skills or knowledge. An approach
that one student finds particularly useful or congenial may well be
profoundly unsettling and confusing to the student sitting next to
her. So the certainty that standardized, replicable approaches will
evolve from believing that “skillful teaching is whatever helps stu-
dents learn” evaporates when applied to diverse classrooms. The
only way through this situation is to get the most accurate reading
we can of the exact nature and range of the diversity we face, so
that we can do our best to change practices as a result of what we
learn. We will return to this point in our exploration of the third
assumption of skillful teaching later in the chapter.
Although the apparent simplicity of this first core assumption is
problematic, this doesn’t mean we should jettison it. Keeping this
assumption at the forefront of our mind frees us up to do things as
teachers that we might otherwise avoid because we feel that some-
how they are unprofessional or too deviant. There are times when
a commitment to behaving in ways that we assume are professional
gets in the way of helping students learn. The example I mentioned
in Chapter One of beginning a discussion by telling students they
did not need to speak illustrates what I am trying to say. On the face
The Core Assumptions of Skillful Teaching
19
06_980668 ch02.qxp  7/27/06  3:25 PM  Page 19

---

20
T
HE
S
KILLFUL
T
EACHER
of it, it seems counterintuitive, to put it kindly, to open a classroom
discussion by saying no one need speak. If I had seen a teacher
do this while I was observing her as a colleague or supervisor, I
would think this was risky, even foolish. Wouldn’t it be obvious that
by telling students they didn’t need to talk the teacher was only
legitimizing laziness and removing any obligation to participate? I
certainly don’t think I would have risked telling students this in the
earlier years of my career. Yet, from the viewpoint of students who
are introverted, or who come from cultural backgrounds where
silence is valued over speech, a reassurance from a teacher regard-
ing the legitimate importance of silence may well ease the terror
such students feel about voicing their opinions in front of peers.
Similarly, students who have been victims of the “higher education
as cocktail party” model of classroom discussion (where good par-
ticipation is equated with name-dropping loquacity) may be pro-
foundly relieved to hear a teacher tell them that participating in
discussion does not mean that they are supposed to be profound,
brilliant, and articulate in equal measure.
Following the assumption that skillful teaching is whatever helps
students learn has also changed my practice when I see students strug-
gling with new learning. In earlier years I would have felt compelled
to jump in at the earliest possible opportunity and urge the student to
stick with what she was trying to do. Seeing a learner in class strug-
gle to learn to read and write, use a concept appropriately, or practice
a particular discussion skill, I would have taken on the responsibility
of “motivating” the student to stick with the struggle. I would have
assumed that what the student most needed, and would most appre-
ciate, would be the teacher moving in (like a crazed pedagogic medic
waving an oversized syringe full of fluid marked “motivation”) to
administer a hefty dose of teacher encouragement. This encourage-
ment, I thought, would move the learner off the learning plateau on
which she was marooned and on to the next level of conceptual
understanding or skill development. Sometimes I was lucky and this
worked; it was exactly what the learner needed at that moment.
06_980668 ch02.qxp  7/27/06  3:25 PM  Page 20

---

At other times, however, my intervention caused more harm
than good, ratcheting up the student’s level of anxiety to the point
where she considered dropping out since obviously (in her eyes) it
was clear that I didn’t think she had it in her to complete the learn-
ing task on her own. In terms of the assumption that skillful teaching
is whatever helps students learn, the best teaching behavior is some-
times to leave the student alone and not to intervene. These are the
times when, in the effort of moving into new and difficult learning
terrain, the learner is in the regressive phase of the “two steps for-
ward, one step back” rhythm of incremental fluctuation. In this
phase learners who are exhausted with the effort of traversing new
and difficult learning terrains throw their hands up saying “I’m
done!” They sit down, take a deep breath, and vow that after a rest
they’ll get back on the learning trail having spent the day metaphor-
ically (though sometimes literally, too!) napping or watching TV.
After all, the brain is a muscle and needs rest and relaxation just
like any other muscle. Once it’s been rested and energy starts to
flow, the trail doesn’t look quite so steep any more, and learners
decide to have one more go to see if they can just make it round the
next bend. In effect, taking a temporary break from the struggle of
learning something new and challenging allows students to regroup
and recharge their batteries so that they themselves decide they’ll
make one more effort.
The key point here is that permitting, or even encouraging,
learners to take a break from the struggle is what allows them to gird
up their loins to engage with the next stage of the learning project.
Were the teacher to jump in at the first sign of the learner flagging,
saying “Come on, one more heave, you’re almost there,” the effect
could well be to reinforce the learner’s decision to quit. The last
thing she needs when trying to recover energy for learning is the
teacher buzzing round her like an annoying pedagogic mosquito
reciting motivational clichés (“Good job! You can do it”) intended
to sting her into resuming learning. So what seems like a generic
act of skillful teaching that holds true across all learning contexts
The Core Assumptions of Skillful Teaching
21
06_980668 ch02.qxp  7/27/06  3:25 PM  Page 21

---

22
T
HE
S
KILLFUL
T
EACHER
(that it’s always a good idea to encourage students you see strug-
gling) now becomes seen as highly situational. If good teaching is
what helps students learn, then sometimes good teaching is leaving
the student without assistance until she has time to catch her breath
and feels strong enough to resume the struggle. Of course, the only
way we can judge the situational appropriateness of either moving in
supportively or leaving the student alone is if we have an accurate
sense of how the student concerned is experiencing learning. This is
the whole point of the third assumption (the most important knowl-
edge skillful teachers need to do good work is a constant awareness
of how students are experiencing their learning and perceiving teach-
ers’ actions) that we will examine at the end of this chapter.
A final illustration of the assumption that skillful teaching is
whatever helps students learn concerns a practice that is a particu-
lar favorite of mine, which is to walk out of the classroom during
the first meeting of a course. I hasten to add that I have never
pushed this commitment to the point where I have walked out and
left the class without a teacher when I have been observed for pro-
motion or tenure! But on occasion, particularly when I’m teaching
a required course that many students do not wish to attend, walk-
ing out is one of the first things I do. Let me explain.
One of the most difficult things for me to face as a teacher is a
group of students that is at best apathetic, at worst angry, hostile,
and contemptuous regarding the prospect of learning. Yet in man-
dated courses this is sometimes exactly what I encounter. In such a
situation telling students that the course will benefit them, that
what they learn will be crucial for their further progress through
school or for their career choice, is often a waste of breath. Learners
will receive this message with skepticism or suspicion (if they hear
it at all) saying to themselves “Of course he’s going to say that, that’s
what he’s paid to say.” The only voices they will take seriously
regarding the importance of new learning are those of former stu-
dents who themselves were initially resistant or hostile to the learn-
ing concerned but who subsequently realized its value. When new
06_980668 ch02.qxp  7/27/06  3:25 PM  Page 22

---

and resistant learners hear formerly resistant learners testify to the
value of learning (particularly when the former learners use lan-
guage and examples that new students can identify with), this has
far greater credibility in the new students’ eyes than if the teacher
gives the same testimony.
This is why one of the first things I try to do when teaching a
class full of resistant students is organize an opening class alumni
panel made up of three or four students who were in the course in
previous years. The important thing is that these students should
be ones who were initially highly resistant to learning and engaged
in various kinds of sabotage and hostile behavior, but who subse-
quently told me (either personally or in end-of-course evaluations)
that they actually found some value in the course. One of the most
pleasing things for me is to run into a student by accident on cam-
pus, or in a local bar or store, and hear that student say to me some-
thing like the following: “I don’t know if you remember me but
I was in your class last year—I was the one who put on a walkman as
soon as you started speaking—and I have to tell you that if I didn’t
learn what you taught me I never would have made it through my
second year of coursework.” Or to hear a student say, “If I didn’t
know how to do what you taught me in that class I would have
done something at work last week that would have brought a law-
suit down on the company and probably got me fired.”
Whenever these (all too rare) golden moments happen, I always
grab the student’s phone number or e-mail address and then, the
next time I teach the course they are referring to, I contact them to
ask if they would be willing to be part of a first class alumni panel.
The panel consists of two or three formerly resistant students who
each take three to four minutes to pass on whatever advice they
choose about how to survive and flourish in the course. They also
talk about how they felt the first day of class when they were new
students in the course, and then they take questions from the
new students. As soon as I have introduced the panel to the new
class, I leave the room. I want the new students to know that I am
The Core Assumptions of Skillful Teaching
23
06_980668 ch02.qxp  7/27/06  3:25 PM  Page 23

---

24
T
HE
S
KILLFUL
T
EACHER
not monitoring in any way what the alumni panel of learners is 
saying. So I walk out, close the classroom door, cross my fingers, and
hope that the panel members won’t trash the course. Occasionally
this has happened; but panel members mostly talk about the bene-
fits they got from the class, how their learning was useful for them,
and their perceptions of my own expertise and trustworthiness.
At least this is what the new students sometimes tell me a few
weeks later.
Had I not taken seriously the assumption that skillful teaching
is doing whatever helps students learn, I would never have dreamed
of walking out of class the first night. In fact it would have been
hard for me to imagine anything more unprofessional than leaving
a class without teacher supervision early in a semester. But as long as
I keep checking my classroom choices and decisions by asking
myself “Will doing this help students learn?” I find I am freed up
from an inhibiting sense of how I should, or should not, be behav-
ing. In this case, leaving the class early clearly communicates to new
students that what they are getting from the alumni panel is the
unfiltered truth of what it’s really like to be a student in this course.
This makes it much more likely that they will take seriously what-
ever the former students say about the importance or utility of the
learning to be undertaken in the course.