That way, when a kid or a cough or a loose paper breaks the flow, you will know how to come back, and they will expect you (be waiting for you) to bring them back.

Start, stop, start, stop, whatever. Controlling those interruptions are merely a matter of will. What’s really tricky for me (and a lot of teachers) are the small disruptions to the classroom flow while we’re already inside a learning moment.

Those are much harder to identify and harder still to control.

but i’ve found in one year of teaching middle school that the effect of things that aren’t directly related to the lesson/task at hand can often have the effect of emptying the bucket.

if the interruption is a good mental break, i would say that’s simply smart teaching – helps you break the lesson down into more segments, which can thus be more easily recalled.

but if the interruption sets their brain going someplace you don’t want it to…that’s definitely some bad sloshing of the pail.

What I’m trying to lump into one definition here are all the ways we interfere with our own goal of moving our students from one place of understanding to another.

During one episode (ok, it was a year and a half ago) a student compared me to a brother – a really annoying little brother – and asked if I would let them work.

Of course, if the option is chat with teacher or do math, and they are choosing to do math, it’s something of a set up. I know that 20 minutes focused is too long, so I provide the breaks. On a good day, the work is sufficiently engaging that they don’t mind, after the interruption, going right back to it. On other days they might refuse the distraction altogether (annoying little brother story).

I guess I’m saying, a steady bucket is good, but you got to give it a swing now and then.