This is how I incorporate “lazy” and “slow” practices into my pedagogy

By M’Balia Thomas

I am a teacher educator within the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Each spring semester, I teach a TESOL methods course required by our Department. The course is designed to prepare preservice teachers (undergraduate education majors) to work with learners of English as an Additional Language. While my Department offers multiple TESOL classes for our students, most will have time and money to take only one such course—mine.

The dedication I hold toward my students—and their future students—means that I feel a constant tension to cover as much course material as possible, and as quickly as possible. Yet, after five years of teaching this course, I have learned that less is more. Instead of rushing through lectures to cover the subject matter dutifully, I am slowing down to cover course topics and assignments with mindful and even intentional laziness (Thomas & Carvajal-Regidor, 2021).

This intention is expressed through three “lazy” and “slow” practices (Shahjahan, 2015) that I have incorporated into my instruction and classroom assessments—the contemplative acts of noticing, pondering, and providing.

Noticing

Noticing—or beholding—is the act of attending to closely in reading, watching, or listening. To facilitate noticing in my classes, I engage my students in Tishman’s technique of “Slow Looking” (Tishman, 2018). As we watch pedagogical videos together, I instruct my students to behold the people, things, and processes (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988) that surface within and impact upon learning in these educational texts.

When I embed noticing practices in my lessons with students, the process becomes an act of guided viewing. Turning to our visual or written course materials, I invite students to observe patterns, aspects of context, and any procedural information that allows them to make decisions that could positively impact the lives of learners. As we as a community of practice look slowly at these texts, I encourage my students to behold with conscious awareness and compassion what they are seeing—witnessing—within the world.

The act of noticing, however, requires slowing down. Slowing down affords one the opportunity to attend to environmental or textual cues that can activate previously acquired knowledge. Accessing prior knowledge can positively affect learning by enabling students to “connect [new] information in meaningful ways” (Ambrose et al, 2010, p. 57).

Pondering

Pondering is, and authorizes, a non-linear approach to coming to know. The act of pondering shifts the instructional focus away from “predetermined answers” (Hart, 2004, p. 38), the pressure to be “correct”, and the fear of getting “it” wrong. In releasing students—and myself as their teacher—from this burden, pondering potentially returns the onus of coming to understand to the learner through introspection.

When I engage students in the act of pondering, I invite them to reflect on concepts and issues raised in our readings and viewings. These include the unspoken ideologies, the hidden curricula, and the manifestation of institutional power that underlie taken for granted educational theories, practices, and policies. Students can be invited to ponder these phenomena through a prompt—some “why?” question—designed to awaken their prior knowledge and create new knowledge connections through the material (Ambrose et al, 2010).

I invite students to ponder in silence or through free-writing, drawing, or even diagramming. The written expressions of their ponderings I call, “musings”. Students need not share their musings with me or anyone else—although they are given the opportunity to do so. When students do elect to share, the musings provide insight into what and how students are thinking about topics raised in class. These artifacts, musings, bear witness to students’ processes of coming to know.

Providing

Providing is the dialogic engagement with texts and utterances. The act of providing allows students to express the meaning that concepts hold for them in our present socio-cultural educational context. Rather than searching their textbooks for “one right answer” (Hart, 2004, p. 37), students are asked to provide textual evidence in support of claims they have made in response to theoretical questions and classroom prompts.

Providing as a lazy-slow practice may seem like a mere semantic play-on-words—or at the least, a shameless co-opting of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)—which it is. Nonetheless, the act of providing encourages a shift away from pedagogical demonstrations of correctness toward manifestations of contextually appropriate pedagogical interventions. Such a shift represents a broadening of educational attention from “what is” to also “knowing how or knowing when” (Ambrose et al, 2010, p. 19).

Over the years, I have allowed the act of providing to be expressed in a variety of ways. Students may write, video or audio record, draw, or pull together found object or visual images in support of their claims. While I offer these options to make my instruction and assessments inclusive and accessible for my diverse student body, the approach also allows for flexibility, creativity, personal expression, and community engagement.

Creating space for lazy and slow practices

In advocating for the adoption of lazy and slow practices in one’s classroom teaching and assessment, I recognize the privilege I am afforded as a tenure track professor to structure my courses in ways that other educators are not.

Yet, there are creative, intentional, and oppositional (de Certeau, Jameson, & Lovitt, 1980) acts one can take up in order to make space for noticing, pondering and providing in the classroom. I draw upon a mantra for action learned in childhood as part of fire safety—stop, drop, and roll—a safety tip designed to protect the self, as well as, others.

1. Stop

Coco Chanel—the French fashion designer—reportedly stated, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off”. Teaching could benefit from instructors adopting the Coco Chanel approach to their pedagogy. We often try to squeeze in too much material into every class, each semester. Instead, let us stop, assess, and focus on what needs to be taught or assessed—and teach and assess just that…and to the best of our abilities.

2. Drop

Eliminate an assignment or assessment that is unnecessary, especially if it gives students the opportunity to delve more deeply into or review a topic. If you cannot drop the assignment, perhaps shorten it. Additionally, instead of giving students 3 questions to answer on a quiz, select 1 question for them to attempt that is most relevant to assessing their knowledge or engagement with the material.

3. Roll

We are in the midst of a global pandemic that continues to evolve daily. We must learn to roll with our current reality and extend grace to ourselves and our students. If you look across the faces and postures of your students and they seem exhausted (not your fault), bored (not your fault), or disinterested (not your fault), do not take it personally. Instead, give students a break—literally. Incorporate a five minute “intermission” into your course where students can attend to the needs of their mind, body, and spirit. Permit students to go to the restroom, eat, sit quietly, or just talk with friends. You may find that following the break, students are able to be more generous with their attention.