An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback). This blog post has been beautifully illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati.
My promise to you: I never use generative AI to create, edit, or enhance my blog posts. All of my content is original.
After writing various posts for this blog for almost 11 years (yes….it’s been that long, I started in 2015!), it often becomes difficult to think of topics to write about. After all, with hundreds of articles on this site (which you can find at my blog index), almost every possible topic to do with education has been covered.
Today’s topic, however is one of those brought on by a sudden realisation, followed shortly by a mental note that etched the following words deep into my mind: Why haven’t I written about this before?.
Vigilance is such a central theme of effective teaching that I am surprised at myself for not writing a blog post about it until now.
So, if you’re the person who’s been waiting for 11 years for me to finally say something about vigilance, then today is your lucky day!
What does ‘vigilance’ mean for teachers?
Vigilance essentially means noticing things, then taking action. When we are vigilant as teachers, we ‘nip things in the bud’, to borrow a British idiom. It means that we spot things, and then we do something about the things we have spotted.
My favourite quote on the importance of vigilance in teaching comes from Dylan Wiliam:
“Responsive teaching… is contingent on constantly eliciting evidence of student understanding and acting on it.” – Wiliam, D. (2011) Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
Vigilance shouldn’t just apply to “eliciting evidence of student understanding”, however. It must be applied to EVERYTHING we do as teachers, and especially the four ‘domains’ that I will now outline.
Vigilance Domain #1: Data
As I explained in my post entitled Using Data to Empower Students, we are usually very good at collecting data as teachers, but we are often not vigilant enough to take action after we have analysed that data.
Things to notice and take action on include:
- Dips and rises in attainment and progress over time. Use this data to set targets for students, praise students regularly, utilise ‘subtle reinforcement’ and intervene when poor performance is noticeable.
- Attendance and punctuality data, as we often wait too long to take action when concerns are flagged. This one is pretty important, as it could be related to safeguarding matters.
- Predicted grades vs actual grades. CAT4 and other enrolment data are often collected and aggregated brilliantly by schools, but does every teacher understand how to use this data? Has training been provided on how predicated grades should be assigned, and are reflections curated when actual grades don’t match predicted grades? There are opportunities here for deep learning at a school-wide level to take place.
Vigilance Domain #2: Safeguarding
It goes without saying that any safeguarding concerns you have about a child must be noticed and reported immediately to the designated person for child protection at your school. Things to look out for include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Sudden changes in a student’s behaviour
- Disheveled/unkempt appearance of students at school. Unwashed clothes, bad smells, students appearing very tired, etc.
- Sexual language/innuendo/behaviour expressed
- Bruises, scars or other visible injuries children may have
- Sudden decreases in attainment
- Disclosures: Of course, if any student discloses something to you that raises a safeguarding red flag, or if you overhear a disclosure (e.g. students talking amongst themselves), then that must be reported.
Of course, if you spot any of the above it does not automatically mean that a child is at risk, but it is important to report any issues, however small, as the information you’ve acquired may be a crucial missing piece in the ‘larger story’ of a safeguarding picture.
Vigilance Domain #3: Behaviour
When most teachers hear the word ‘vigilance’, they immediately think of behaviour as the first domain to which ‘nipping things in the bud’ must be applied. There’s good reason for this: on a day-to-day basis, vigilance will be most often applied to behaviour management.
Teaching has changed a lot since I started my career in 2005 as a PGCE student and trainee teacher. Back then, there weren’t as many requirements to be so locked in to my computer as I am today. There weren’t really any VLEs, such Google Classroom or Moodle, to upload materials to. Email existed, but it wasn’t as big a part of a teacher’s life as it is today. EdTech, in it’s current form, was also in it’s infancy.
How things are different now! As teachers, we are expected to do so many things digitally, and this creates a challenge from a vigilance perspective. Teachers often find themselves working on computers whilst they’ve set a task for their students to complete (and, you can include me in that category, too). This is fine, so long as vigilance is still in place:
- Every few minutes or so, walk around the classroom to check that your students are completing the assigned task. I would not advise spending long periods working on your computer, oblivious to what the students are doing.
- Use verbal check-ins, such as “Group 2, how’s that going?”, “Remember, everyone, to include 10 slides minimum in your presentation”, and so forth. This signals to the class that you are still present, and watching.
- Digital check-ins can work well. Any form of cloud-based task, such as Google slides and docs, Canva projects, MS Teams work, and so forth can be shared with you as the teacher. You can log in to that work as the students are doing it, and offer real-time feedback.
- Utilise live-marking strategies (very powerful).
Spotting students who are off-task early, and taking action, is a classic example of ‘nipping things in the bud’. You deal with the issue in its infancy, before it grows into something that is more difficult to manage. My blog post entitled Behaviour Management Basics goes into more detail on this.
Vigilance Domain #4: Professional Intelligence
Information related to your students….
- Hobbies
- Interests
- Achievements outside of school
- Birthdays
- Upcoming events
- Career aspirations
- Prior achievements
- Life outside of school
….can all be used in the rapport-building process, and….rapport is an essential quality to build if you want to be an effective teacher. Strike up conversations with your students in which you discuss the above things, with the aim of being an encouraging mentor. Take a professional interest in the entire life of each of your students, whilst maintaining professional distance of course, and you’ll be amazed at how this will benefit your classroom management dynamics.
Key takeaways
- Vigilance means noticing things, then taking action.
- We need to collect and analyse data (such as attainment and progress), then use that for target setting and interventions.
- Safeguarding red flags must always be noticed and acted upon immediately. Talk with your schools designated person for child protection if you are unsure about how to do this.
- Behaviour management is heavily dependent on vigilance. It’s always better to ‘nip poor behaviour in the bud’ before it grows.
- Take a professional interest in the entire life of each of your students, and use that information for rapport-building. This comes under the broad umbrella concept of ‘Subtle Reinforcement’.
