Teaching with Clarity: How to Prioritize and Do Less So Students Understand More

by Tony Frontier

Feeling overwhelmed—constantly, on a daily basis—has unfortunately become the status quo among educators. But it doesn't have to be. Schools need to stop adding more programs, strategies, activities, resources, projects, assessments, and meetings. Though they are often implemented with the best intentions, these things ultimately end up as clutter—that which inhibits our ability to help students learn. Instead, teachers need more clarity , which emerges when we prioritize our efforts to do less with greater focus. This isn't simply a matter of teachers doing less. Rather, teachers need to be intentional and prioritize their efforts to develop deeper understanding among students. In Teaching with Clarity , Tony Frontier focuses on three fundamental questions to help reduce curricular and organizational clutter in the interest of clarity and

* What does it mean to understand?
* What is most important to understand?
* How do we prioritize our strategic effort to help students understand what is most important? By prioritizing clear success criteria, intentional design, meaningful feedback, and a shared purpose, teachers can begin to clear away the curricular clutter that overwhelms the profession—and embrace the clarity that emerges.

197 pages, Paperback

Published June 24, 2021

Reviews

[Cindy Jacobsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book that focuses on clarity and eliminating curricular clutter I thought there was quite a bit of clutter. If you stick with the central idea, my take away is the critical link of transfer when prioritizing teaching decisions. Not anything new but some good reminders and examples to think about.

[Katie Gawron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book and think the author provides a very strong foundational support to creating a district-wide curriculum where teachers are empowered to focus on transferable priority standards and ensuring students are ready for the real world with practical and applicable skills and strategies. However, my reasoning for 4 stars is that to follow the author’s recommendations with validity, the *entire* school district would have to be on board and take part in choosing these standards that the whole book is then based off of, and in reality I really do not see many school districts that would be willing to stop and put in the effort upfront, even though I do believe that the efforts would result in easier workload afterwards.

[Kate Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book five stars because I felt it gave tangible steps to move towards better teaching. I think the power of this book expands if you can get a whole team, department or school on board but I left feeling like I had control and could follow through on many of the strategies listed. I think this book will sit on my desk so I can flip to specific questions and phrases I want to use in the next school year or two. I have set goals for myself to gradually increase these priorities as they are rather daunting yet doable.

I will say having taught with standards based grading and loving that system I did easily buy into the message but I will be recommending this book to teacher friends far and wide.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a grad class. It makes a pretty good argument that to be more successful, schools need to systemically adopt similar success criteria based on a taxonomy of learning and adopt many elements from standards based grading including feedback, inter-rather reliability, and valid, reliable assessments. It was very abstract with hypothetical situations rather than details, so it was challenging to follow, especially at the start, and since these need to be system wide, several suggestions can be disappointing since they can only be applied across the system not just in individual classrooms. Some can be applied in the classroom, though, so it was valuable.

[Lisa Wells · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid ideas, much clutter.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was extremely repetitive. It could have been an article and made just as strong impact for me.