Introduction

Sarah Connell Sanders

As a teacher, I do everything in sixes. Six guiding questions. Six project deadlines. Six classroom stations. You get the idea.

Numerologists believe the number six is both stable and karmic. Mathematicians call six the smallest perfect number. Guitarists play with six strings. Bees build their hives with six sides. Gamblers risk their fortunes on the fate of a six-faced die. Coffins rest six feet under the ground.

I was not surprised to read the Pew Research Center's finding that one in six U.S. teachers work second jobs, making us three times as likely as U.S. workers overall to hold down multiple gigs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2019). In my years as a teacher, I have supplemented my own meager salary by waitressing, lifeguarding, coaching, and writing. I am the one in six, and I am tired.

So is Anne Lang, a 25-year veteran of public school teaching. Anne's husband, Jim, is the author of the original Small Teaching-a text geared toward new college professors. Anne and I are both educators, but we face a different crop of eager learners than Jim. I have spent the majority of my 13-year career corralling middle schoolers, and she has spent 25 years teaching the lower elementary grades, primarily kindergarten. We both find plenty of ideas and strategies that resonate with us in the original book because the learning principles identified by Jim are ones that apply to learners of every age. But college teachers have an enviable amount of freedom in terms of what they do in the classroom. Teachers at the elementary and secondary levels face a distinctive challenge, in that they have to learn how to balance what they know is best for their students with the demands of a number of other audiences: parents, politicians, and administrators. Negotiating the needs of all of these constituencies can create a climate in which teachers feel like they are being micromanaged from every angle.

"When August 1st comes around, I feel a sense of anticipation and dread," Anne confided in me. "Don't get me wrong, I always look forward to arranging my classroom, meeting my new students, and labeling materials with their names. I even welcome the initial staff meeting where we get to hear who got married, who had their first grandkid, and whose children headed off to college for the first time." But over the course of her first day back at school, at some point, Anne feels her new-school-year enthusiasm begin to dim when she hears the inevitable announcement of a fresh rollout, ambitious initiative, or program-effective immediately.

"Two years ago, we adopted a new math program," she said. "I work in a large urban district and we had already adopted a new program two years prior. I remember sitting in a hot overcrowded classroom with everyone, while the book company's facilitator reviewed a million slides of all the 'wonderful' and 'engaging' lessons and activities we suddenly had on our plate. They handed us student workbooks, teacher's editions, and new online login information for my kindergartners. My head actually began spinning."

I can sympathize. It happens every year. I have this moment where I think, "Is it too late to quit?" Federal data shows that about 8% of teachers leave the profession annually. A survey conducted by the RAND research organization found that after the 2020-2021 school year, one in four teachers considered quitting (Steiner and Woo, 2021). We stay because we love our kids and we want to make a difference. But, it can be hard to remember that when Chad from Unicorn Math Company is delivering a three-hour presentation in a stifling mop closet that you just found out has been converted into your new classroom due to overcrowding. Then the wi-fi goes down.

In Anne's case, she avoided teaching the latest new math program for as long as she could. Can you blame her? She was training up to 28 five-year-olds on routines, procedures, and expectations. It didn't help that she had no access to a laptop or a projector. Like so many of us, she went home each day feeling frustrated and disappointed with herself.

Her saving grace came in the form of Greg Tang, an elementary math guru who has authored a number of math picture books and created online math games and puzzles for young learners. Early that school year, Greg conducted a one-day workshop with Anne and her colleagues, but something felt different. He gave them the space to express their true feelings about the new math program. She realized she wasn't alone; everyone was intimidated. "It turned out, the program just wasn't working for so many of us," she said.

Greg encouraged the teachers to start thinking small. "He gave us tips on how to incorporate math throughout the school day," Anne recalled. The moment her head finally stopped spinning came when Greg gave her a piece of paper to fold. "If a kid can fold this paper into two equal halves, they are already on the way to mastering a first-grade math standard," he told Anne. It was a tiny tip, but she felt her confidence grow. "I realized that making small, but effective, changes in my math lessons would be the key to success for both my students and myself," she said.

Anne's experience of being asked to use some wholesale new teaching approach is not a unique one; I've encountered it as well. Sometimes I feel like public school districts have a big target on their backs to attract the sales staff of new programs, technologies, and software. Do I want my students to have access to the latest and greatest research-based best practices in education? Yes, yes, yes! Do I want to miss class time for days or weeks of training on expensive new materials? No, no, no.

Jim and Anne have discussed this lower-ed problem at their dinner table more times than they can count. On one occasion when they were kind enough to entertain me, Jim pointed out, "The fact that such initiatives wash up on shore so regularly, only to be replaced by the next big wave of new ideas a few years later, has left so many educators across America skeptical of any outside efforts to shape the work they do for their students."

"And they're right to feel that skepticism," Anne interjected.

Jim continued, "Whatever wholesale program your school or district has decided to impose upon you and your fellow teachers this year, you know full well that it won't change the most fundamental challenge you face as a teacher: spending each and every school day engaged in the slow, hard work of helping your students learn."

"Don't get me wrong," he added, "large-scale educational initiatives can, at times, provide a useful framework for the daily work of teaching, but they can also get in the way of tried-and-true techniques that have always worked for you and your students. Worse, they can close your mind to the prospect that new ideas or research in education do have the capacity to help you evolve and grow as a teacher, and to improve the learning and achievements of your students."

And so Jim and I, armed with the insights of teachers like Anne and others you will meet in this book, began the work of applying the theory of small teaching, initially developed for college faculty, to the K-8 environment. What you'll find here is exactly what college faculty found in the original book and what online instructors at every level found in the first sequel, Small Teaching Online (a book that appeared, providentially, just before the pandemic hit): a sensible and manageable approach to enhancing the everyday work you do in the classroom. The small teaching approach is unique in the way that it identifies a small number of learning principles that are applicable to all students and then translates those principles into quick and easy teaching strategies for any classroom. Whether you are looking to enhance your existing practice or struggling to adapt to a new context or district-wide initiative, small teaching will ensure that the work of learning in your classroom will continue and improve.

Although this book might have special appeal to new and early-career teachers, I really wrote it for the weary, the disheartened, and the exasperated. I am already too old and exhausted to be sold an entirely new approach to education every year. I want to know the fundamentals of how children learn and then be allowed to use my own creativity and experience to apply those lessons to my own classroom. No matter what new state mandate or administrative fiat has been sent down to shape my classroom, I want to make sure I am still staying true to the basic principles of education that will ensure my students are safe, happy, and learning.

In this book, you will find exactly the tools you need to accomplish this objective. Together with Jim, I have highlighted a small number of principles identified by cognitive scientists as fundamental to the learning process. I have then outlined easy and concrete strategies for putting the principles into practice in your classroom. You do not need special materials or pricey technologies. I don't want you to radically re-think your hard-earned experience. My hope is for you to recognize these principles in the work you are already doing and make small modifications to enhance them further in order to have a substantial...