Cultivating Greater Communicators

The Greater Educator

For years now, I have been a huge believer in the power of a more personalized, student-centered approach to learning. I bought in to the philosophies of empowering student voices and forging past the factory model of school pretty early in my research, but, If I’m being honest, I struggled immensely to put my beliefs into effective practice in my classroom. There are several reasons for this, but one of the most substantial was a lack of access to practical strategies for implementation. One of the cornerstones of innovative education is the 4C’s movement. It’s not hard to convince teachers that fostering communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking are incredibly important in preparing students for college and career readiness. Yet, when we deconstruct any of those tenets, there is such depth that it can be confusing and overwhelming to know how to best equip students and embed these lessons into our learning culture. Let’s start by diving deep into the idea of communication. We could argue that communication is central to everything else that human beings do - it is the vehicle by which we make sense of the world around us. And effective communication is an intricate web of conversation, written expression, fluency, representation, body language, listening, reading, conveying opinion, persuading an audience, motivating, emoting, and crafting a clear message among innumerable other modalities. All of these things are taught and assessed in some form in our schools, but the elements of verbal communication that are encompassed in 21st Century skills may not be as intuitive in instructional planning for teachers. If clear and effective communication is valued so strongly in our schools, our workforce, and our society as a whole, then educators should be more direct and intentional about providing instruction geared at eliciting the skills. All teachers bear the responsibility of considering the communication skills necessary to be successful academically, and we need to be disciplined in recognizing this responsibility. For example, while reading teachers provide instruction on drawing meaning out of words on a page, content area teachers know that learners utilize different skills sets when reading for or about scientific inquiry, mathematical proofs, or historical perspectives. Are we utilizing effective instructional practices to explicitly address those differences? And are our school systems organized in a way to make this feasible? Think about the standards that are designated as your responsibility and take the time to identify the forms of communication necessary in order to master those standards. Some teachers might identify tone, questioning, initiation, respectful disagreement, or social or cultural norms as necessary attributes, and probably even factor these criteria into assessments, but do we provide the modeling, scaffolding, guided practice and feedback necessary to refine and effectively utilize those skills? It is easy to assume that learners implicitly possess an awareness of these components, but it is unfair to assess their demonstration of them if we are not providing adequate instruction. All levels and areas of education can build strong communicators. It comes down to identifying the skill as a core value and being intentional about teaching it. We can do this by providing students with opportunities to evaluate effective communication in action. Use video or role playing as a way to gauge what students already know, notice, and wonder about the role of communication in a particular scenario. Provide vocabulary, questioning techniques or sentence stems to build proficiency. Strategies like fishbowl discussions, think alouds, identification of desired outcomes, and self-evaluation can provide targeted practice. Apply the skills in a variety of contexts, utilizing digital communication platforms and seeking diverse interactions... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-greater-educator/support