Teaching Tip: How to NOT connect with your students – Caffeinate

If I had a YCISL workshop for teachers, perhaps the first message I would send is to stop using coffee (or any caffeine) as a habitual start to the day.

One vivid memory I have from dropping off my kids in the mornings at elementary and middle schools is the “scooting” of teachers to their classrooms to get ready for the start of the day. But what I really noticed and have kept in mind is that most of the teachers were clutching a cup of coffee. I know lots of people (adults, that is) need a shot of coffee to get started in the morning – or at least they think they do. I wondered whether this morning ritual could affect classroom dynamics.

Let’s first jot down some advisory information from a Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) article titled “Parents & Teachers: Teens & Caffeine.” I trust PAMF as that is where my family and I get our (great) health services.

• “There is no nutritional need for caffeine…”
• “…more and more youth are picking up the bad habit of consuming these products, earlier.”
• “Many youth use stimulants like caffeine to stay up and study or compensate for not getting enough sleep.”
• “The effects of the caffeine stay with us for at least six hours, and caffeine is addictive.”
• “Most people use caffeine as a stimulant, primarily in the morning to increase adrenaline production and help them feel alert during the day.”
• “In the long run, caffeine does the opposite of what people want it to do.”

So, we should not encourage youth to drink coffee for health reasons. We know that youth already have sleep issues (see this other PAMF article “Sleep Needs“) – primarily due to stress, excessive homework and poorly structured school schedules – and caffeine makes it worse. Seeing teachers (or parents either) addicted to a morning coffee in order to get through their day is not a sight students should be exposed to.

But my concern about teachers caffeinating in order to function in front of students is more on the neurological level. For this, we might learn something from the Psychology Today article “Does Coffee Perk Up Your Brain . . . or Not?“:

• “…increases your heart rate and blood pressure.”
• “…studies show that caffeine only increases the output and quality of your work if the work you’re doing doesn’t require nuanced or abstract thinking.”
• “Caffeine seems to speed your thinking processes up a bit, and improve memory creation and retention when it comes to declarative memory, the kind you use when memorizing lists.”
• “It doesn’t seem to help at all when it comes to creative energy, or to thinking beyond basic tasks.”

So any thought that being caffeinated improves teaching is an intrinsic illusion. The teacher may feel more responsive and aware, but they are actually becoming focused on uni-tasking and not dynamically connecting with the class of students. Caffeinated teachers are also unable to involve creativity – which is one of the foundations of the YCISL program. Further, the idea that caffeine “speeds” thinking should be worrisome as the potential for accidents rises – how do you feel about speeders on highways and streets? To have teachers “speed” their teaching to students trying to learn knowledge for the first time (liken to student drivers) is perhaps the one of the most critical reasons education makes students stressed and fatigued.

From a personal observational standpoint, I have also seen university faculty clutching their caffeinated beverages (especially Diet Coke…oh, so sad) to lectures, meetings and other places…and I might guess at a causation-correlation with the heart problems that are commonplace here.

Teachers may be resistant to the idea of giving up caffeine as an artificial teaching aide. As with most beneficial behavioral change, there will be resistive arguments made as to why teachers should not be deprived of this pleasure. Arguments such as social value, long hours grading work, workload management and mental acuity may be voiced…but if we can positively frame, leveraging intrinsic motivation, the benefits of functioning with water or other relatively healthy beverages, then I think we can make a start at alleviating the stress that currently blankets our schools. Ideally, we can use an evidence-based approach to build intrinsic motivation to a sustainable level: give teachers feedback from the students about their performance without caffeine. To use one of our latest YCISL messages: I understand this is Simple, but not Easy.