Both my AP and regular kids always request lecturing. They also tend to perform better on the exams when I lecture for them than when I don’t. “Miss Muscente I like it when you lecture to us, I remember it better because you make it interesting to remember.” I’m also a very animated person when I lecture, so I think that’s a big part of it. I think it also plays well with my particular students who generally need more direct instruction and structure than others 🤔
You have (ironically?) made your point and didn't make your point. This video was essentially a lecture, and it delivered content. But it was engaging and fascinating, I think what your ending points came down to is we all like a good story told well. Please keep making these!
Well, I feel called out. Then again, I already knew my constant lecturing loses kids, no matter how enthusiastic I am. Problem for me is if they won't do the reading themselves how are they going to get a significant portion of the content? I know other methods are better at retaining knowledge, but how do you weigh those with pacing and structure? I suppose for many of my students and me it standardizes and brings more certainty to my courses which brings our anxieties down and gives us a knowledge base with confidence. Also, it has made the whole virtual/asynchronous/quarantine processes go much smoother, and we're still not out of that yet.
Ha, no call outs here! On some occasions I'll definitely give a 5-10 minute information-transfer kind of lecture if I need to make sure they know certain things before we do an activity. What I was talking about in this video was really the decision to take a whole class (or a significant portion of one) to lecture. It can be done well, but it's tough. And on the flip side, I drill it into my students' heads from day 1 that they are responsible for the content of the course, which means I'M not. If they don't get it themselves, they won't get it from me. It usually takes some of them a couple weeks before they understand I'm serious, and usually that happens after they fail an assignment or two. But then we get normalized and it's pretty good from there on out. Like I said, there's no moral imperative connected to lecturing or not lecturing-different circumstances require different methods.
Of the hundreds of lectures I've sat through, the only ones I remember are those that were truly life-changing. If curiosity and passion drive learning (as I believe they do), then it stands to reason that a lecture should inspire curiosity and passion. The lectures that changed my life "opened a new world," as I believe you put it. I think many lecturers fail (and this includes myself, especially when I ran a lecture-heavy class) when they neglect to offer an opportunity for listeners to see themselves as part of an evolving story.
Yes! One thousand times yes! I’m not so full of myself to think that every time I lecture lives will be changed and it will be an unforgettable moment. So much of that depends on where the students are as well. But I at least aim for that outcome, and sometimes it happens.
@@HeimlersHistoryTeachers Totally agree. I think there's also something to be said for the relational aspect of a *good* lecture as well. When the teacher and the students share a moment in which they are connected to the same story (a story that illustrates something profound about not only history, but the human experience), the entire group strengthens a bond based around seeking the truth. Of course, that type of experience can take place in a myriad of settings, but good lecturers usually understand that their listeners will only benefit if there is a relational dimension and a true connection with the class.
I’m gearing up to start my second year teaching WHAP. Last summer, I polled as many teachers as possible about what they did during class time, and it was close to 50/50 straight lecture vs. skill work. I ended up doing a hybrid, and in the end, 94% of my students passed the exam. It was not perfect, but after being so unsure what to do, it was validating to know that skill-building and retaining content are equally valuable. However, when we we did skill work and they needed to know a particular topic, I often told them, “You may want to watch Heimler!” Thanks for all of your help to both me and my students.
This is something I have been thinking a lot about over the past couple of years. My master teacher in the credential program was a FANTASTIC lecturer and I have always wanted to embody this. When I first started teaching AP, 90% of my class was lecture because there was so much content. Somethings I lectured excellently... and other things I bored even myself. What I want to do moving forward is ONLY lecture the things I do well, and find other mediums with which to teach the content that I don't; or perhaps just let them read about it while I focus more on skills. Thanks for these videos!
You mentioned that to become a good lecturer you can develop the skills, you can learn these and practice them. Would you consider making a video on this? As there are not many out there. Thanks for such great content
So, just for the purpose of spreading ideas and helping each other out, what are your favorite non-lecture ways of delivering content. My favorites - gallery walks and Socratic seminars!
This is really spot on. However I do think really good lecture-based content delivery has its merits, it's the baby in the bathwater after all -- especially with the 'gifted kids' (though we don't really use that category anymore). But I'm not out to start a flame war on this topic 🤗🙏... Anyway, I think you and Einstein said it best, regarding the faculty of wonder and how to instigate that love of learning by setting the example. Great insight as always!
I went back to college when I was 35 and before graduating, I asked my history professors a question..."what are the biggest issues with the generation of students that you have now?". Each one of them said a few different things, but the two things that were universal were writing and not doing well during the lectures where note-taking was concerned. I decided then that I would become a better lecturer and have students writing more.
If my students want compact information delivered in an efficient and entertaining way, they can watch a Heimler video before class starts. We'll be spending class time deconstructing another SAQ together or comparing thesis statements.
I took away a pretty interesting point that I wish to use immediately - lecturing when I am passionate and excited about something. Picking and choosing the lectures makes the lecture more accessible, important, and may not cause the doldrums of the "constant lecture" to my classes. I'm not the best at Revolutions, so I need to let the information speak for itself, and engage in discovery with my students. However, Post-Classical? Fuggedaboudit. I'm going to lecture and start moving the pieces of individual fact into a narrative whole. And probably help the learn to do the same. In the end it's about control - not tyrannical control, but the control of knowing that I did my best to bring them through the content. And while that's not the best for a human's education, the confines of modern American Public Education have put the educators in that position. I feel there is much to help my growth on this channel. Let's keep going.
I've always believed that it depends alot on the subject. Should there be tons of lecturing in math class? Probably not. Should there be no lecturing in a history class? Absolutely not. History is a story and storytelling has been the most effective way of telling since before the written word.
Do you have a suggested way of delivering content? Does this mean that your students get all your content from reading assignments? Your video made me think a lot about what others ways exist for students to gain content.
I give my students some options when it comes to content. Would I prefer them to read a textbook? Probably. But I'm also a realist and so I offer them video, audio, and text options.
i actually enjoy lecturing rather than reading the textbook 😂 it makes me retain the info better and textbooks just throw me off and make me want to stop reading 3 pages into a 30 page chapter
Lecturing is really about storytelling, not information. Tolkien has a great thought about storytelling. He simply asks the question - does the story revolve around death? I have found that if that answer is "yes" my students enjoy the class. If not, they are sleeping!
I disagree with this assessment. The best history teacher I had in high school lectured exclusively, and the whole class received 4's or 5's on the APUSH exam. Of course, this was in the ancient mists of time -- the late Eighties and early Nineties, when students were expected to read AND not every student was allowed into APUSH. You had to prove your writing skills first and be recommended by your English teacher. Now, academically average kids are taking 5-6 AP classes per year in order to improve their college resumes. So despite some bad lecturers tainting the format, the real reason lectures have gone extinct is the shrinking attention spans of students, the abundance of "un-advanced" students in AP courses, and a decline in student reading. There are dynamic tools other than lectures, but students cannot expect performance art and/or videos for every lesson. Sometimes in school, you need to read the book or listen to a lecture. If, as you surmise, teachers are overusing lectures when student reading would suffice, what happens when students who don't read AND their teachers won't/can't lecture? Well, as a current APUSH tutor, I can tell you what happens: parents hire me to, you guessed it, lecture!
I agree that the students bear some fault in the decline of the lecture, but I don't think attention span is to blame. They can watch a movie for 2.5 hours without moving. The difference is whether we're able to create enough tension to keep them attentive until we release them.
Lecturing doesn't work because us teachers are bad at it... Right... It's not because of incompetent administrators who don't know what a good lesson is, automatically declaring your lesson bad because you lectured. Or because these same administrators are too ignorant to understand flavor of the week practices are often completely broken. Or because these same administrators scapegoat teachers so they don't have to take the blame for a school system that's failing because of their incompetence. It's not because of university academics using "research" to declare lecturing bad because they want to sell their new flavor of the week curriculum to a school system. It's got to be because teachers are bad at lecturing... If you only give me 45 minutes a day with each class, 150 kids worth of classes, and two years of material to teach in 10 months, lecturing is the only method to efficiently communicate enough information to come even close to making sure students are prepared for standardized tests and AP exams. I don't spend 100% of every class period lecturing, but I'd never communicate enough to my students to pass state or AP exams without doing it most of the time. While I am sure some teachers can make other strategies work, anyone who tells you lecturing doesn't is either misguided or has an agenda.
It sounds like you are in need of a different school. But casting that aside, consider all the teachers you have had lecture to you. Were they all equal in skill? Did you learn the same from each of them? I have had fantastic lecturers... and horrible ones. The horrible ones I learned nothing from, and the great ones inspired me to want to lecture. Yes I agree with some of the stuff you said, but it is true that its a tool that not everyone has.
@Brandon Equils Sure, but that's not what Heimler is contending. He's saying most of us suck at it and only he knows how to teach best. It's anti-teacher, condescending, nonsense. Also, there are no other schools to go to. Most teachers are treated like absolute garbage by their administrations. If a teacher isn't being treated that way, they're either really lucky and are actually in one of the rare schools that support teachers... ... or they're brainwashed into agreeing with the garbage the admins are spewing and are an even worse part of the problem that the admins are.
@@paladinpariah325 That wasn't my take from the video, but to each their own. I guess I am one of the lucky teachers where the admin is supportive and the teachers have freedom. It's a double-edged sword though... some teachers get away with too much. I hope everything gets better for you.
Both my AP and regular kids always request lecturing. They also tend to perform better on the exams when I lecture for them than when I don’t. “Miss Muscente I like it when you lecture to us, I remember it better because you make it interesting to remember.” I’m also a very animated person when I lecture, so I think that’s a big part of it. I think it also plays well with my particular students who generally need more direct instruction and structure than others 🤔
You have (ironically?) made your point and didn't make your point. This video was essentially a lecture, and it delivered content. But it was engaging and fascinating, I think what your ending points came down to is we all like a good story told well. Please keep making these!
Well, I feel called out. Then again, I already knew my constant lecturing loses kids, no matter how enthusiastic I am. Problem for me is if they won't do the reading themselves how are they going to get a significant portion of the content? I know other methods are better at retaining knowledge, but how do you weigh those with pacing and structure? I suppose for many of my students and me it standardizes and brings more certainty to my courses which brings our anxieties down and gives us a knowledge base with confidence. Also, it has made the whole virtual/asynchronous/quarantine processes go much smoother, and we're still not out of that yet.
Ha, no call outs here! On some occasions I'll definitely give a 5-10 minute information-transfer kind of lecture if I need to make sure they know certain things before we do an activity. What I was talking about in this video was really the decision to take a whole class (or a significant portion of one) to lecture. It can be done well, but it's tough. And on the flip side, I drill it into my students' heads from day 1 that they are responsible for the content of the course, which means I'M not. If they don't get it themselves, they won't get it from me. It usually takes some of them a couple weeks before they understand I'm serious, and usually that happens after they fail an assignment or two. But then we get normalized and it's pretty good from there on out. Like I said, there's no moral imperative connected to lecturing or not lecturing-different circumstances require different methods.
Of the hundreds of lectures I've sat through, the only ones I remember are those that were truly life-changing. If curiosity and passion drive learning (as I believe they do), then it stands to reason that a lecture should inspire curiosity and passion. The lectures that changed my life "opened a new world," as I believe you put it. I think many lecturers fail (and this includes myself, especially when I ran a lecture-heavy class) when they neglect to offer an opportunity for listeners to see themselves as part of an evolving story.
Yes! One thousand times yes! I’m not so full of myself to think that every time I lecture lives will be changed and it will be an unforgettable moment. So much of that depends on where the students are as well. But I at least aim for that outcome, and sometimes it happens.
@@HeimlersHistoryTeachers Totally agree. I think there's also something to be said for the relational aspect of a *good* lecture as well. When the teacher and the students share a moment in which they are connected to the same story (a story that illustrates something profound about not only history, but the human experience), the entire group strengthens a bond based around seeking the truth. Of course, that type of experience can take place in a myriad of settings, but good lecturers usually understand that their listeners will only benefit if there is a relational dimension and a true connection with the class.
I’m gearing up to start my second year teaching WHAP. Last summer, I polled as many teachers as possible about what they did during class time, and it was close to 50/50 straight lecture vs. skill work. I ended up doing a hybrid, and in the end, 94% of my students passed the exam. It was not perfect, but after being so unsure what to do, it was validating to know that skill-building and retaining content are equally valuable. However, when we we did skill work and they needed to know a particular topic, I often told them, “You may want to watch Heimler!” Thanks for all of your help to both me and my students.
94%?! That’s LEGIT! Well done!
WOW! That is awesome!
This is something I have been thinking a lot about over the past couple of years. My master teacher in the credential program was a FANTASTIC lecturer and I have always wanted to embody this. When I first started teaching AP, 90% of my class was lecture because there was so much content. Somethings I lectured excellently... and other things I bored even myself. What I want to do moving forward is ONLY lecture the things I do well, and find other mediums with which to teach the content that I don't; or perhaps just let them read about it while I focus more on skills. Thanks for these videos!
Agreed. Lectures are also useful for explaining or connecting complicated and nuanced content so that students don't get confused.
For sure
You have so aptly described the method of good lecturing. Being a novice in the field, I hope to learn more from you.
You mentioned that to become a good lecturer you can develop the skills, you can learn these and practice them. Would you consider making a video on this? As there are not many out there. Thanks for such great content
So, just for the purpose of spreading ideas and helping each other out, what are your favorite non-lecture ways of delivering content. My favorites - gallery walks and Socratic seminars!
Good video and ideas. Nice content 😉
This is really spot on. However I do think really good lecture-based content delivery has its merits, it's the baby in the bathwater after all -- especially with the 'gifted kids' (though we don't really use that category anymore). But I'm not out to start a flame war on this topic 🤗🙏... Anyway, I think you and Einstein said it best, regarding the faculty of wonder and how to instigate that love of learning by setting the example. Great insight as always!
I went back to college when I was 35 and before graduating, I asked my history professors a question..."what are the biggest issues with the generation of students that you have now?". Each one of them said a few different things, but the two things that were universal were writing and not doing well during the lectures where note-taking was concerned. I decided then that I would become a better lecturer and have students writing more.
If my students want compact information delivered in an efficient and entertaining way, they can watch a Heimler video before class starts. We'll be spending class time deconstructing another SAQ together or comparing thesis statements.
I took away a pretty interesting point that I wish to use immediately - lecturing when I am passionate and excited about something. Picking and choosing the lectures makes the lecture more accessible, important, and may not cause the doldrums of the "constant lecture" to my classes. I'm not the best at Revolutions, so I need to let the information speak for itself, and engage in discovery with my students. However, Post-Classical? Fuggedaboudit. I'm going to lecture and start moving the pieces of individual fact into a narrative whole. And probably help the learn to do the same. In the end it's about control - not tyrannical control, but the control of knowing that I did my best to bring them through the content. And while that's not the best for a human's education, the confines of modern American Public Education have put the educators in that position. I feel there is much to help my growth on this channel. Let's keep going.
Sounds like your students are about to get some real passion. Love it!
I've always believed that it depends alot on the subject. Should there be tons of lecturing in math class? Probably not. Should there be no lecturing in a history class? Absolutely not. History is a story and storytelling has been the most effective way of telling since before the written word.
Do you have a suggested way of delivering content? Does this mean that your students get all your content from reading assignments? Your video made me think a lot about what others ways exist for students to gain content.
I give my students some options when it comes to content. Would I prefer them to read a textbook? Probably. But I'm also a realist and so I offer them video, audio, and text options.
i actually enjoy lecturing rather than reading the textbook 😂 it makes me retain the info better and textbooks just throw me off and make me want to stop reading 3 pages into a 30 page chapter
Lecturing is really about storytelling, not information. Tolkien has a great thought about storytelling. He simply asks the question - does the story revolve around death? I have found that if that answer is "yes" my students enjoy the class. If not, they are sleeping!
The lecture is not dead but is one method of delivery.
True story
I disagree with this assessment. The best history teacher I had in high school lectured exclusively, and the whole class received 4's or 5's on the APUSH exam. Of course, this was in the ancient mists of time -- the late Eighties and early Nineties, when students were expected to read AND not every student was allowed into APUSH. You had to prove your writing skills first and be recommended by your English teacher. Now, academically average kids are taking 5-6 AP classes per year in order to improve their college resumes. So despite some bad lecturers tainting the format, the real reason lectures have gone extinct is the shrinking attention spans of students, the abundance of "un-advanced" students in AP courses, and a decline in student reading. There are dynamic tools other than lectures, but students cannot expect performance art and/or videos for every lesson. Sometimes in school, you need to read the book or listen to a lecture. If, as you surmise, teachers are overusing lectures when student reading would suffice, what happens when students who don't read AND their teachers won't/can't lecture? Well, as a current APUSH tutor, I can tell you what happens: parents hire me to, you guessed it, lecture!
I agree that the students bear some fault in the decline of the lecture, but I don't think attention span is to blame. They can watch a movie for 2.5 hours without moving. The difference is whether we're able to create enough tension to keep them attentive until we release them.
Lecturing doesn't work because us teachers are bad at it...
Right...
It's not because of incompetent administrators who don't know what a good lesson is, automatically declaring your lesson bad because you lectured.
Or because these same administrators are too ignorant to understand flavor of the week practices are often completely broken.
Or because these same administrators scapegoat teachers so they don't have to take the blame for a school system that's failing because of their incompetence.
It's not because of university academics using "research" to declare lecturing bad because they want to sell their new flavor of the week curriculum to a school system.
It's got to be because teachers are bad at lecturing...
If you only give me 45 minutes a day with each class, 150 kids worth of classes, and two years of material to teach in 10 months, lecturing is the only method to efficiently communicate enough information to come even close to making sure students are prepared for standardized tests and AP exams. I don't spend 100% of every class period lecturing, but I'd never communicate enough to my students to pass state or AP exams without doing it most of the time.
While I am sure some teachers can make other strategies work, anyone who tells you lecturing doesn't is either misguided or has an agenda.
It sounds like you are in need of a different school. But casting that aside, consider all the teachers you have had lecture to you. Were they all equal in skill? Did you learn the same from each of them? I have had fantastic lecturers... and horrible ones. The horrible ones I learned nothing from, and the great ones inspired me to want to lecture. Yes I agree with some of the stuff you said, but it is true that its a tool that not everyone has.
@Brandon Equils
Sure, but that's not what Heimler is contending.
He's saying most of us suck at it and only he knows how to teach best.
It's anti-teacher, condescending, nonsense.
Also, there are no other schools to go to. Most teachers are treated like absolute garbage by their administrations.
If a teacher isn't being treated that way, they're either really lucky and are actually in one of the rare schools that support teachers...
... or they're brainwashed into agreeing with the garbage the admins are spewing and are an even worse part of the problem that the admins are.
@@paladinpariah325 That wasn't my take from the video, but to each their own. I guess I am one of the lucky teachers where the admin is supportive and the teachers have freedom. It's a double-edged sword though... some teachers get away with too much.
I hope everything gets better for you.
this video made me sleep