When Hardly Working Is Classy

Working hard is not nearly as classy as being a “hard worker”.

Probably every teacher has seen a writing assignment where a kid has written the same phrase or sentence over and over in order to make his writing look longer. A shorter, better-written response is much more valuable. We have seen the student who writes numbers all over a math assignment, but clearly the kid has no idea what to do with them. These kids may be working hard, but what would be better is listening to instruction, studying, and following directions. Yes, it is harder to take fifteen minutes and really figure out a difficult problem.

You have to be a hard worker to want to do this. If you put on a show of toiling, but everything that you are doing is wrong or low-quality, you will end up working harder in the long run.

I have been using Google tools for a few years, but this year Google Forms has transformed my teaching. I feel like I had been the one working hard, and my teaching has turned into the classy hard worker for me. Through Google classroom I assign “quizzes” that I create in Google Forms. It took a little fooling around to get the forms just right, but some of my most recent quizzes have graded student work automatically, provided students with scores and explanations (I populated the quiz with these), inspired self reflection, and even taught data analysis. Let me explain the last two concepts: I have my quizzes programmed to allow students to see other students’ responses. When a kid finishes taking his quiz and “submits” it, he clicks on “see previous responses”. This provides pie graphs for each multiple choice question displaying the percentage of students’ choices. Also, it shows every written response, minus any names. In this way, students can weigh what they wrote against what they see their peers producing. This has greatly benefited all of my students. The hard workers are going crazy to outshine each other, and the struggling writers are reading exceptional paragraphs produced by peers. Parents can see all of this, too. They can assess their child’s standing in writing ability.

This principle can be applied to classroom management, also. Kids that work hard to impress the teacher, but goof around when they can get away with it are not classy. The kids whom the teacher can count on; the ones that may not work extra at getting attention, but do everything exceptionally; they’re the classy ones. More than quantity, quality has class. Would you rather half the class making shushing sounds to help quiet the class, or two kids who communicate to the rest that the faster they all quiet down the quicker they can get to recess. The hard workers don’t have to work hard. Their “hardly working” shows class.