Episode 241: Sneaky strategies children use to avoid work. What’s the remedy?

Andy Psarianos

Welcome back to another episode of the school of school podcast. This is a big, big, big, big special podcast thing. And it's me and Robin today. Adam's not here. We don't know what he's doing. That's why it's special. And we're kind of thinking, Hmm, Adam's not here. Or do we know what to do? Or do we like, usually Adam's here keeping us in check, right?

Robin Potter

I don't know. He is. Yeah, he always shows up first too. What to do.

Andy Psarianos

Well, he does always show up first, right?

Robin Potter

He does. It must be the time difference, the time zone. That's what I'm going with. That must be it.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, he's keen to get it over and done with because it's late in the day for him and we're like just starting walking down with our cup of coffee. That's right. Wiping the cobwebs from our eyes. So look, what I thought would be fun to talk about today is is maybe we could talk about what are some of the strategies that kids use when they're trying to avoid doing whatever they it is that you want them to be doing.

So maybe I'm gonna throw it right at you Robin. My question to you is what did you used to do when...

You weren't on task and you didn't really want to be, but the teacher was coming by and you had to, you what was your strategy for getting out of doing work?

Robin Potter

Maybe ask a question, but nothing related to the task. When is assembly? I heard we have an assembly this week. When is that? Maybe I'm just throwing off just a random, complete, yes, exactly. Yeah, that might be one strategy, but I...

Andy Psarianos

So just like a...

Right. Divert attention from the task.

Robin Potter

I'm trying to, it's so long ago, Andy, it's hard for me to recall what I would do. I mean, I think, and you mentioned this in a different podcast, but you know, asking if you can leave the excuse to use the bathroom, the loo, whatever you want to call it. And I think that is a common, a common one because it can really drag out time.

Andy Psarianos

Absolutely.

And yeah, and teachers know it too. It's like, hmm, okay, you know, and then, and that's a tough one as a teacher, because what do you do, right? Do you say, do you say, no, you can't go to the bathroom. You have to stay here and work or yeah, yeah, you know, you know, yeah, exactly. But on the other hand, you know, I know I was a master of the sort of wandering the hallways when I was little, because it would be like, okay, just gonna go here and I'm going to look at, you know, you weren't going, you weren't, it wasn't like you were like completely off course or anything, but it would take you, it could take you a good, good five, 10 minutes to get to the bathroom, you know, and same to come back. So that was great because you could skip a significant part of the lesson if you really, really weren't interested in what was going on. Well, no, that's the thing. Yeah.

Robin Potter

Yeah, but now how often can you do that before the teacher starts realizing Andy's got a pattern here. So you've got to come up with other things. I mean, kids look out the window. I mean, that was common where they were just not on task and just staring daydreaming. Not I mean, nowadays, I don't know if kids still do that. If they're not allowed to have their phone in class, which is whole other thing, then they could still be daydreaming looking out the window.

Andy Psarianos

Mm.

Robin Potter

If they have their phones, that's another problem altogether. That's a distraction.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. Yeah. The other one is looking busy, right? Which is, you know, which, which is, it's like making up things that, that are, you know, so if you, if you really kinda, and, and, and sometimes it's hard to see exactly where that line is. so someone seemingly taking great care of their work.

Robin Potter

Yes.

Andy Psarianos

could just be trying to avoid doing more work, right? So, you know, what would be a great example would be like, okay, like I'm gonna, you know, just to get the ruler out and I'll draw very careful rules with different colored pencils and or pens and, you know, just kind of like, you'd be kind of organizing your page, but not actually doing what it was that you're supposed to be doing. It just kind of killing time, right?

Robin Potter

Right. I think I was an example of that actually, yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, that's quite a common kind of way of avoiding. No substance, was no, you weren't on the task. That's right. Yes, exactly, yeah.

Robin Potter

Everything looked really good, but there was actually no substance in it. That's right. It's more about setting up for the task, but spending 30 minutes to set up for the task.

Andy Psarianos

That's right. Yes, exactly, yeah a form of procrastination right the other one the other one that you can so what I always tended to do was I would always be busy because it's just my personality I always like to be busy and doing things but I usually wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing I would be doing something else you know so it could be doodling or or whatever you know yeah.

Robin Potter

Right. Something very important. Yeah. Doodling. I was going to bring that up because I was always a huge doodler. I loved to doodle and I would doodle. Yes. So it looks like I'm actually doing something, which is drawing. But if they come up and see what it actually is, it's doodling. Yes.

Andy Psarianos

Exactly. From a distance for a teacher, like you're very busy doing, you know, writing or whatever, but you're, you know, it's got nothing. Yeah and that's so, you know, the Japanese have this thing they call teaching amongst the desks, right? That's the term that they use. And what it means is that as a teacher, you're wandering the classroom and paying attention to what's going on. You know, it's like giving a class a task and then sitting at your desk. You know, in my elementary school days, a teacher would have a desk that faced out to the class and they would sit there and probably have a stack of things that they were marking or whatever.

Robin Potter

That's right.

Andy Psarianos

Give everybody something to do and then they would get busy doing their thing and every once in while that you just see them They've raised their eyes a little bit just to see who's or if somebody could hear some murmuring down in that corner They would sort of pay attention, but they rarely would get up and go see what was going on They might just say all right you to stop You know stop jibber-jabbering and get back to work or whatever right you could be doing anything at your desk they had no clue.

Robin Potter

Right. Yeah. Yeah, because our desks were in rows and everybody faced the front. So it's very easy for them to just keep an as you said, an eye check on us rather than wandering around. But when they did, when they actually did get up and walk the rows, you know, it'd be one row at a time really. So you knew at least when they were going to get to you.

Andy Psarianos

Always.

Yeah, you knew when to flip the page or whatever, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robin Potter

Right, right. Yeah. Nowadays desks, because of the arrangement of desks, they're often in groups, know, small groups and it would be easier for the teacher to be wandering around and seeing a lot of different work being done at the same time. So, yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, so I'm just trying to think, have I been in an elementary school classroom, like primary school, elementary school classroom at all in the last 10 years where it was rows and columns and the teachers in front of us? No, I have not seen that anywhere in any country.

Robin Potter

Where teachers at the desk? no, no, no. And you rarely see the teacher just sitting at the desk, you know, because they're up teaching, they're standing all the time and they are walking, walking around the classroom. Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

No, teachers stand all day now. Yeah.

Yeah, but not always as much as let's say the Japanese would say you have to, right? Or certain, like I know that, so I do a lot of seminars with teachers and I love to walk, like it kind of throws everybody off, like why is he walking around the room?

You know, that's not what you do in a kind of a grown up lecture, right? But I bust people all the time. It's like, what are you? So, you know, last time I spoke in Calgary, there was a, it was a course on fractions. And at the same time, the Olympics, Canadian women were playing against the American women while I was doing a lesson. And there's a couple.

Robin Potter

For the gold, yes.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, for the goal. Yeah. And at the back of the class, there's a bunch of teachers watching the game, right? You know, like, they were good. They were really, they felt like I really busted them when I, you know, and was like, I don't care. Just tell me when they score. Right. Like, but you know, it's like, as long as you're doing the work, but you know, it's just, it's just that idea of wandering around the classroom. And even as an adult and doing that, it's kind of fun, you know, because then you look at people and you just kind of prod them and ask them a question and say, okay, well, did you try doing it that way or whatever it is? And then, you know, it's, get a kick out to do on that right but it's I think that's a missing trick in a lot of a lot of cases you know and it's a good way to keep people on task if they know that you're going to be like at any given point it only takes you about a minute to walk through the class and figure out where everybody's at.

Robin Potter

Absolutely. It's not a big effort to do that. And it would cut down on kids, I guess, losing their focus and getting back on task.

Andy Psarianos

But also, you know, the other thing, the other thing too is just like, if you're giving children something to get busy with for 20 minutes on their own, good luck. mean, that's not, they're not that, you know, you gotta make it your class a little bit more engaging than that, right? You gotta give them stuff that's interesting. And the other trick too is to put them together in groups because when they're in a group, you can't just kind of like quietly slide away and start doodling, right? Like without everybody noticing, you know what I mean? There's just that engagement is important. It's a good way to keep people on task. But yeah, I think doodling and looking busy and asking to leave the class, they're the age old time tested ways of sort of, you know, killing time in class and not being engaged, right?

Robin Potter

Absolutely. But hey, like you said, walking amongst the desks, desks sounds like an easy solution to prevent some of that from happening.

Andy Psarianos

Well, it should just be normal in the classroom, right? Like it's, it shouldn't, no one should be surprised that you're walking around the classroom. Like it should always be in there engaging with everyone, seeing what they're doing and whatever, but also not being too, creating a culture that's like you're not the Gestapo, it's not an inspection that you're doing, right? It's kind of normal that you're walking around and sometimes people will be off task and you gotta cut them a bit of slack too, right? It's just like, I've often said like if you treated your employees the way that some people think you should treat school children, you'd have lawsuits against you, right? It's just like, know, like for a long time there was this idea that there had to be like a certain pace in the classroom all the time.

Robin Potter

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Keep going and keep going and don't let anybody, know, and that's just so unhealthy, right? Like people need a bit of time to capture their thoughts and, you know, have a breath between sort of different little sprints of work and stuff, right? You know?

Robin Potter

Yeah, and as we say nowadays, mean, times are different. People do not have long attention spans and children never have, but it's, I think, worse now than ever. So keep the tasks short.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

But that's not to say that, you need to, like, I think it's also the responsibility of the teacher to build tenacity and resilience so that they are tenacious. They will work on a problem for more than 30 seconds before kind of you know, giving up or getting bored. But you have to build that. It doesn't come naturally, right? And I think that that's all part of your classroom routines and how you, so you you got to increase, well, one, you got to give them things they're interested in doing. This is part of Carol Tomlinson's work as well. You know, this is on differentiated instruction. It's like, it's why this idea of measuring a child's ability is so tricky because you don't really know whether or not they can do something or you really know if they're not doing it right now for you right? But there's lots of reasons why they might not be doing it. One of them might be they just don't like you, right? Or they, they, you know, it's true, you know, or they just find this thing so tedious. It's like, you know, if they're, if they're, if it's too easy, or it's too difficult, or, you know, it's outside of their zone of understanding, then, you know, then those are all teacher problems. not student problems, right? You know?

Robin Potter

Very true.

Andy Psarianos

And you got to give them, you got to give them the skills. They got to build the skills to keep going, to know that, you know, on first attempt, they might not get it right. So they got to try again and try a different strategy. That's not normal. Most kids will say, well, I tried and I couldn't do it. So now I'm going to go to the bathroom or doodle or something, Or do it after. Yeah. Which is another great past time.

Robin Potter

Yeah, yeah. Or doodle in the bathroom. Okay, let's get everyone in trouble. Yeah, giving kids ideas. All right. Well, it only takes one.