I'm a "Come and Show Me" teacher.

I'm not a Sit-and-Listen teacher.  That doesn't I never talk at students from the front of the room.  My class grades daily quizzes together, while I explain the solutions.  Occasionally in the AP class - probably once per week early in the year, though essentially never in conceptual physics - I do a quantitative demonstration from the front of the room.  But that's it.

After the daily quiz, I give students a list of things to do, usually involving prediction and measurement in the laboratory.  Sometimes the list includes test or quiz corrections.  Sometimes a Pivot Interactives video or a The Physics Classroom concept builder make the list.  

Whatever the activity, students are released quickly from the responsibility of paying attention to the person in front of the room.  That's more important than the majority of teachers realize.  See, you get antsy sitting through an hour-long faculty meeting - you consider a three-hour district professional development presentation your personal purgatory.*  How do you think students feel as they are shuttled among seven different sit-and-listen classes with minimal breaks in between?  And they do this every single day?

*The sale of indulgences would create a significant revenue stream.**

**Shh, Greg, don't give anyone ideas, dangit.

Okay, many physics teachers do in fact leave plenty of time for their students to work independently on some of the tasks I've described above.  What do you do while they work?

Some teachers walk through the room giving advice, encouraging questions, helping to debug lab equipment.  That's fine.  I know some amazing teachers who are always on their feet through the room.

I don't walk.  I sit at the front of the room.  Students are asked to bring me their work after each problem, after they have acquired data, when they've reached a defined check point.  

At last week's AP workshop, Glenn experienced my position-time graph exercise. "Oh, so you're a Come and Show Me Teacher," Glenn told me.  Yes, yes I am!  I had never heard that term, but I love it.  

The advantages of Come and Show Me go beyond merely avoiding student ennui.  Students physically moving around changes the dynamic of the class.  It makes the atmosphere far more similar to a coffee shop than a library.  And where do students generally choose to work these days?  The Panera in University City, Philadelphia on Friday afternoon was chock full of students studying, to the extent that a seat was hard to find.  I wonder ironically whether the UPenn Library was similarly packed...

The Come and Show Me class style encourages students to talk to each other about physics - since I'm not within easy earshot of each student, and since I've generally got a line of people waiting to talk to me, it's much more effective to ask a friend rather than me if a student has a quick question.  Come and Show Me avoids noble-yet-fruitless staring at problems without making progress, or charging though a problem for most of an hour compounding mistake upon mistake.  Instead of finding out later that their approach was all wrong (and then being frustrated with the wasted time that can't come back), students get feedback sooner rather than later.  But Come and Show Me explicitly discourages students from relying on me to answer every little question, to do all the heavy lifting for them.  Just the obstacle of having to get up and walk to my desk, then to stand in line for a minute or two, encourages everyone to work out whatever they can for themselves.

To use this style of teaching every day requires significant culture building early in the year, a large and diverse set of exercises for students that include things to come and show me... and enormous confidence on the part of the teacher.  Confidence that the class, for the most part, will adapt to this very different approach to learning.  Confidence that when a couple of students don't adapt, your style is still serving the vast majority of the class well.  Confidence that when you hear passive-aggressive comments from parents and colleagues ("You didn't go over this, I don't know how anyone is supposed to understand." is the most common), you should nevertheless carry on. 

Don't listen to early feedback.  Listen to what people say at year's end, and especially to what they say 1-5 years later.  

What I hear years later is that my students don't remember every detail of each of Newton's laws.  But they do remember how they felt in class - they looked forward to my class.  They remember the relaxed and friendly atmosphere.  They remember their pride when they finished each listed item and moved on to the next.  And they remember that there was no room for BS, no room for half-measures in solving physics problems: since they had to show me their work right then, in person, with a line of people behind them... they were careful to put forth truly their best effort.