Students don't have buttons

Teachers organize lessons in a variety of ways, but most follow a general pattern of, as an early mentor of mine put it, “small thing, big thing, small thing.” Or as a writer might put it, intro, body, conclusion. In a lesson plan, the intro is the “activator”—the activity meant to “activate prior knowledge.” Students are assumed to have some store of knowledge, however acquired, and what the teacher creates to “activate” that knowledge is related to the new concept or material to be introduced. In other words, we can’t trust that they will remember what they know or make connections to something new unless we trick them into thinking of it. 

It’s an intriguing notion, that the right activator will conjure the appropriate knowledge for the lesson. But in this construction, the teacher is the actor and the student is the acted upon—the phrase suggests that a teacher pushes a button to warm up an engine. The problem is, engines don’t start themselves—they can’t push their own buttons, however powerful they are. If a teacher is necessary to push the button, how do students learn to start themselves? 

I don’t have buttons. I don’t want to look at my students and see buttons. More importantly, I don’t want to use language that perpetuates a belief that students have buttons. As much as all of us try to encourage our students’ agency and autonomy, we cannot most effectively do so if we use language that suggests the opposite. If they believe they have buttons, they have given all their power away. 

And yet how often has a teacher said, “That student really pushes my buttons?” Even beyond the problematic teaching language, we have all so internalized the idea that we are exposed—that someone else can exploit our “buttons”—that we don’t even think about the message we’re sending to students. If I say, “You push my buttons,” I'm saying, “You have the power to make me react.” If we all have buttons, we’re all walking around at the mercy of other people’s flailing digits. 

Additionally, the phrase implies that “knowledge” is a discrete entity. As a colleague asked me, “Do I look for the “Shakespeare” button when I want to begin reading “Othello”?” Technically, activating is “causing something to start”—as by using a button—but in chemistry it’s “making a reaction happen more quickly”—which is closer to what is (probably) intended by the phrase. 

However, prompting a chemical reaction also requires outside agency, and worse, it implies there is a scientific precision to teaching. The teacher is organizing a series of steps meant to produce a particular result. The teacher’s activity—a series of questions, visuals, or writing tasks—are all meant to direct students towards the same or similar end. Replicating results may be the goal of a science lab, but should not be the goal of an average high school classroom. If an activator fails to activate, or propels students in a wayward direction, that should not be considered failure on the students’ part or the teacher’s. Misdirection and spontaneity contribute to learning as much as a structured chain reaction. 

Some teachers are uncomfortable with spontaneity, for understandable reasons. If the lesson goes astray, they may not know how to get back on track to the goal—they may only know, or be comfortable with, one direction. This is not because teachers aren’t adaptable; it’s because too often, the only acceptable direction has been provided for them. They regard students as nouns because someone above them regards them, the teachers, as nouns as well. The language we use to describe teaching, because it reduces learning to discrete, countable objects, facilitates a belief from the top that the flow of interaction, direction, and endpoint, can be manipulated from the outside. 

I would much rather convey to students that their buttons are private—or even non-existent. I cannot “activate” prior knowledge because I am not the one with power over you or your buttons, just as there is no one outside of me who can compel an end result by directing that my lesson comprise a scripted series of activities. 

Instead of external buttons, I have an internal drive, I have expertise, I have experience, and I have boundless, demonstrable interest in the subject I teach. Even if students aren’t themselves interested in the subject, a teacher’s demeanor can show them that the subject is at least worthy of interest. If the focus is on searching for buttons, or replicating a result, the learning that can emerge from a less externally driven force is lost.