I'm not ignoring you... really.

A term I had not thought about much lately appeared in the paper today: "benign neglect."

A fellow educator taught me the term long ago, with the general meaning being to not hover over students, to give them some space (but stay nearby physically and/or psychically), and not try to impose my own sense of how much time was necessary for a particular task.

This likely flies in the face of modern educational theory, with its emphasis on near-constant interactions between teachers and students, but near-constant interaction is not only exhausting for ONE person (the teacher -- students get a break once the teacher moves to the next group or individual), but all that hovering and engagement often creates a culture of "wait for the teacher, and THEN I will know how to proceed."

The way this works in in-person classes is that we assign a discussion question to a small group, and then we (the teachers) stand in the back of the room or sit at our desk, observing but not doing much interaction (unless some group insists). 

Benign neglect doesn't really amount to giving students that much freedom. It's not like rolling a ball our on the court and instructing players to create their own offense, for instance. Nor is it handing a text to a group and asking them to discover themes in the writing with no preparation or "scaffolding" (an educator terms that just means maximizing chances for success).

I would still be nearby, and it would be my job to bring the class together at some point, to prompt a bit deeper thinking, and to allow each group to report out on what they had talked about.

The drawback for some might be that the groups may take things in directions the instructor did not see coming, and that demands a lot of agile thinking on the part of the teacher. THAT requires careful listening, not to mention giving whoever is reporting their ideas some room. Answers may wander a bit, and few people are comfortable speaking in perfectly formed sentences off-the-cuff.

The longer I taught, the more I valued a bit of chaos, a bit of the unknown. 

After all, education is not really about knowing the answers, but about realizing what we DON'T know (and then digging in to find more answers).

It helped me to learn the truth of this educational saying, "Training makes people more alike. Educations makes people more different."

You can train me to use the tools in some software program, for instance, and there are established "best practices." But what I do with the program? That might be wildly different from student to student.

The unknown is what scares people about education.