You’re the Teacher: Another Equity Pedagogical Practice that Should Be Modeled by the Mentor and Implemented by the Mentee

To give each student a chance to participate in classroom discussion, and mitigate against the teacher selecting his or her favorite students to respond, You’re the Teacher should be modeled by the mentor and utilized by the mentee. Here is how this equity pedagogical practice works.

The teacher poses a divergent question (i.e. a question that has multiple answers) to the class. After some wait time has elapsed, e.g. 10 seconds, students raise their hands indicating that they want to answer the question posed. The teacher then selects one class member to share her response. After that student has stated her idea, the teacher says, ‘ You’re the Teacher’ and thus she selects the next person to speak. The process continues until all students have a chance to contribute their ideas to the original teacher’s question. If deemed necessary, the teacher can impose the following conditions on which student is selected to speak. 1. When you are the teacher, you must select a student who is not seated next to you. 2. No student may give a second answer until all students have had a chance to speak.

In the next post we will describe another equity pedagogical practice, 'The Discussion Ball’.