Off-Task Behavior

Playing Along

As it turns out, students do well if they just play along. Although preferable, they do not even have to be highly motivated and inherently curious; students who show up and simply do what is being asked (respond to the warm-up, come in having worked on some ideas from the homework, thoughtfully participate in the discussion) end up doing great work and showing a depth of understanding that is far more than what’s needed for state or national monitoring tests.

But this challenge of getting students to play along is much harder than it appears. The temptation to avoid hard work—to avoid thinking—is tough for many students to overcome. Sometimes, the content loses out to the immediate desire for information about the coming sports game. Or the beguiling allure of a classmate’s perfume. Or the pressing hype of the details of lunchroom drama. Or, sadly, the most riveting lesson can be lost on a student suffering from lack of sleep, nutrition, or feelings of safety.

Whatever the reason for a student being off-task, a carefully planned, crucially articulated lesson ends up being missed. And the opportunity to learn passes by, with only the hope that the student now takes it upon himself or herself to seek ways to get what was missed, often completely unaware that there will be no way to recreate the germination and subsequent flow of ideas in the way they naturally occurred and built upon one another as the lesson unfolded.

Minimizing off-task behavior, in other words getting as many students to play along at any one time as humanly possible, becomes the name of the game in two ways: for the success of each individual student’s learning, and also for the health of a community of learners that rely on the insights and ideas of each other to make sense of the world around them.

Assumptions About Preventing Off-Task Behavior

One common underlying assumption of teacher preparation courses is that if teachers make their courses engaging, then students’ innate desires to learn will make everything work out well for everyone. And while this assumption is not by itself enough, it is true to the [Page 562]extent that there are many things teachers need to prepare well for, in order to help students buy in and become thoughtfully involved in the content.

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