The publicity line from Erich Segal’s best-selling 1970’s novel “Love Story” was “Love means never having to say you're sorry”. With the stop-and-go technique, the core truth is “Educating means never having to say ‘stop talking’ ever again”.
Trust me, you’ll love it!
Once you start using stop-and-go, you must steel yourself from ever saying “stop talking” to a class again. This is where we realize that we have to break our old verbal habits and not repeat the thing that all of our elementary teachers said to us infinitum if we want to have a snowball’s chance of training our students with this visual behavior modification technique.
If you end up using a hybrid system involving both the stop-and-go technique as well as vocally the mantra of “stop talking”, the whole gesellschaft will fall flat on its face and you will have less control then you did when you started.
Using stop-and-go will immediately provide you with found minutes that turn into hours that turn into days of found teaching time. It allowed me to accomplish more in 45 minutes then I could in 60 minutes without using this technique. Once you start using it, you'll come to the sudden realization that you need more material for a 45-minute class. The students have more opportunity to gobble up the content you present and expand upon it in activities that you've planned. Momentum is achieved. At the end of class, kids are sometimes winded.
One of the greatest benefits of the stop-and-go technique is that in their mind’s eye, your students will create a visual image of the S and G with a magnet moving back and forth. As children approached fourth and fifth grade, it was important to take stop-and-go from being a local technique in my music room into the general sphere, namely into what Bronfenbrenner referred to as the ecological model of human development: outside of the school and into their daily activities in the world.
If stop-and-go helped me corral children only in my class, it would have been a parlor trick, a wasted learning and leadership opportunity. Stop-and-go not only could but should also help people in their everyday lives.
As I would say to the older kids, “Just as you know when I'm going to go up and move that magnet, you know when it's the right time to do the right thing. You're just seeing someone doing an action with a magnet on a blackboard that represents what you are thinking in your mind all the time, namely that there's a right time to work and there's a right time to take a break. When you’re alone, you can move that magnet in your brain, whether you're cleaning your room at home, cutting the grass outside, doing homework on your own, going into a library to research something you're excited about, or playing Fortnite with a friend.
The one little thing I've never told you is that for years, I have had the same S, G, and magnet in my head, and I move that magnet back and forth all day long. It helps me know what I should be doing at any given time. There’s no way that you would know that I'm doing that in my head, but I am. And if it can help me, then it can help you, too. If we develop the habit of stop-and-go and learn that it's within our power to control that measure of time, we will be happier people at the end of the day with what we've accomplished.”
It took me decades to figure out stop-and-go in my life. I know many adults from all walks of life who would benefit from its powers.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox once said, “With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see.” By helping students find simple patterns, by encouraging meaningful habits, and by modeling techniques like stop-and-go, we will insure students a harvest that we as teachers may never see come to full fruition.
Thankfully, the seed will grow long after we are gone.
Trust me, you’ll love it!
Once you start using stop-and-go, you must steel yourself from ever saying “stop talking” to a class again. This is where we realize that we have to break our old verbal habits and not repeat the thing that all of our elementary teachers said to us infinitum if we want to have a snowball’s chance of training our students with this visual behavior modification technique.
If you end up using a hybrid system involving both the stop-and-go technique as well as vocally the mantra of “stop talking”, the whole gesellschaft will fall flat on its face and you will have less control then you did when you started.
Using stop-and-go will immediately provide you with found minutes that turn into hours that turn into days of found teaching time. It allowed me to accomplish more in 45 minutes then I could in 60 minutes without using this technique. Once you start using it, you'll come to the sudden realization that you need more material for a 45-minute class. The students have more opportunity to gobble up the content you present and expand upon it in activities that you've planned. Momentum is achieved. At the end of class, kids are sometimes winded.
One of the greatest benefits of the stop-and-go technique is that in their mind’s eye, your students will create a visual image of the S and G with a magnet moving back and forth. As children approached fourth and fifth grade, it was important to take stop-and-go from being a local technique in my music room into the general sphere, namely into what Bronfenbrenner referred to as the ecological model of human development: outside of the school and into their daily activities in the world.
If stop-and-go helped me corral children only in my class, it would have been a parlor trick, a wasted learning and leadership opportunity. Stop-and-go not only could but should also help people in their everyday lives.
As I would say to the older kids, “Just as you know when I'm going to go up and move that magnet, you know when it's the right time to do the right thing. You're just seeing someone doing an action with a magnet on a blackboard that represents what you are thinking in your mind all the time, namely that there's a right time to work and there's a right time to take a break. When you’re alone, you can move that magnet in your brain, whether you're cleaning your room at home, cutting the grass outside, doing homework on your own, going into a library to research something you're excited about, or playing Fortnite with a friend.
The one little thing I've never told you is that for years, I have had the same S, G, and magnet in my head, and I move that magnet back and forth all day long. It helps me know what I should be doing at any given time. There’s no way that you would know that I'm doing that in my head, but I am. And if it can help me, then it can help you, too. If we develop the habit of stop-and-go and learn that it's within our power to control that measure of time, we will be happier people at the end of the day with what we've accomplished.”
It took me decades to figure out stop-and-go in my life. I know many adults from all walks of life who would benefit from its powers.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox once said, “With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see.” By helping students find simple patterns, by encouraging meaningful habits, and by modeling techniques like stop-and-go, we will insure students a harvest that we as teachers may never see come to full fruition.
Thankfully, the seed will grow long after we are gone.
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