In the traditional transmission model of teaching, the roles of the students and teachers are well defined. The teacher delivers information, often through lectures, presentations, assigned readings, and assignments. Largely the student is the receiver. This is especially true for dependent learners as they move across grade levels and subject areas.

Even if there are active teaching and learning strategies — like questioning, turn and talk, groups, or projects — often these processes and techniques are merely tacked on to the traditional model of teaching as ways to enliven learning. 

But activity, movement, or discussion doesn’t automatically result in student learning. That is because typically the teacher is still doing most of the information processing, thinking, and meaning-making, even if it’s simply pre-digesting it for students in the form of over- scaffolding.

According to Harvard researcher, Ron Ritchhart, author of Making Thinking Visible, the antidote isn’t simply removing all scaffolds. It is for the teacher to cultivate in students the dispositions and cognitive routines needed to process new content effectively so that over time they are able to do more of the deep learning without too much scaffolding.

Going forward, I  will call this the “personal trainer” mode or stance.  You’ve heard me use this term already.  The personal trainer stance is a critical part of the learning partnership in the Ready for Rigor frame.  The learning partnership equation goes:  

RAPPORT + ALLIANCE = COGNITIVE INSIGHT

Alliance in the learning partnership equation names the teacher as personal trainer of students’ cognitive development within the instructional core.  It’s designed to make learning moves visible to you so you can coach the student to correct and expand those moves.  

The fancy word for this is “cognitive mediation” — your ability to help the student initiate and maintain the information processing cycle through all three stages.  Many people talk about teachers as “warm demanders.”  The personal trainer metaphor incorporates the warm demander idea and builds on it to include the idea of giving corrective feedback in order to build the capacity of the one being trained.  This works much like an athletic coach would do for a player, or a personal trainer would do for a client they are helping to get in shape.

As a result of cognitive mediation when in personal trainer mode, the teacher helps the student:

• Increase her ability to be metacognitive and metastrategic when processing new content
• Increase her deep understanding 
• Increase her  learning transfer — the student makes vertical and horizontal connections

In addition to mindset shifts within this alliance with students, the teacher becomes a “student of her students.”  She becomes curious about their learning moves, not just whether they got an answer right or if they completed the assignment. The focus is on whether or not the student deepened his understanding.

We will dig deeper into the mindsets, dispositions, and moves of the teacher as cognitive mediator or “personal trainer of students’ cognitive development” in Stage 2. For now, begin to notice and name students’ learning moves.