The Consent Burger
Recently, an educator I mentor sent me an excited text message: “Gretchen! I have to tell you a story! Can we FaceTime?” She told me she’d just gotten off a training call with a classroom teacher whom she is mentoring about how to be more coach-like in her relationships with students. She’d just taught the mentee my 3-Step Consent Burger and the teacher got so excited. “You put words to something that’s been bothering me for a while now,” the teacher gushed. “I can’t wait to try it!” What got this educator so pumped up?
The Consent Burger is a three-step communication protocol that I teach adults to use when communicating with students. I developed it in the context of the one-to-one academic and executive function coaching, but I’ve seen it revolutionise relationships in the classroom, in families and more. Clearly, this classroom teacher saw the potential, too.
Increase Student Motivation with the Consent Burger
Here’s how it works. Imagine a yummy burger — you get to decide whether it’s a meat or veggie burger. Every burger also has a top and bottom bun, right?
Step 1: Get Consent. The top bun represents asking students for consent before we teach them. In my coaching, when I teach students a new skill, I like to empathise with them. “I’m hearing that you’re sick and tired of getting low grades on your tests. I know some brain science that might just help you understand why you’re scoring so low and what to do about it. It will take me about ten minutes to teach it to you. Are you willing to let me share it with you?” And voila — we have asked for consent.
Step 2: Teach the Lesson. The burger in the middle represents the lesson you offered to teach the student. I’ve only ever had one student tell me they weren’t willing to learn (and they had a really good reason, too!). Most of the time, students say yes, and then I teach them the lesson I promised I would.
Step 3: Reflect About Takeaways. When I’m done teaching the mini-lesson, I often like to say something like, “There you go! That’s what I thought might be valuable foryou to learn. But what do you think? What value did you hear in what I just shared?” This is the bottom bun of the burger. I’m often pleasantly surprised by what students say when I give them a chance to check in about what was valuable.
I’ve noticed that when I follow these three steps with students in one-to-one coaching, they are more likely to be engaged, pay attention, ask solid questions and experiment with more effective academic habits. It feels a bit like magic! As effective as the Consent Burger is in coaching and tutoring, it’s equally effective in the classroom. I’ll explain more in a moment, but first let’s talk about the theory.
The Power of Shifting Students from External to Internal Authority
In contemporary schooling, students rarely get a choice in
what they learn.
The school system serves as an “external authority” telling teachers what to teach and when to teach it. Teachers then become the “external authority” who pass along the required content to students. Students are at the bottom of the chain, empty vessels who are expected to gratefully receive this trickle down wisdom.
Even though school is meant to empower students with knowledge, the very structure of the learning ends up inadvertently disempowering students instead. The Consent Burger is an attempt to even out some discrepancies in power and privilege that are so often present in communication between adults and students. It is a tool that can be used by anyone — and even by students themselves — to help connect students to their “internal authority” and put them back in the center of their own learning.
It acknowledges that there are skills and knowledge that students do not innately possess, which need to be taught by an “external authority.” But they can be taught in a way that honors, rather than ignores, students’ “inner authority” — their desires, feelings, needs and challenges.
When educators start and end learning experiences by centering students, we increase motivation to learn and effectiveness of coaching and teaching.
How Teachers Can Tweak the Consent Burger for the Classroom When working with groups, classroom teachers don’t have the luxury of asking individuals for consent directly. However, you can incorporate key elements of the Consent Burger into lessons and assignments. For example, when you introduce the lesson of the day, give students an opportunity to reflect about why it might be relevant or valuable to them. This could be through journaling, a think/pair/share or group discussion. Next, teach the lesson as usual, in as interactive and
engaging a method as possible.
Finally, save a few minutes to have students reflect: What do they remember? What did they learn? What was of value to them? Was there some content that felt especially relevant? A thinking skill they got to practice that will be of value now or in the future? If it didn’t feel especially relevant, that’s okay, too.
As an academic life coach, I’ve had hundreds of intimate conversations with students about their learning, and I know for a fact that students crave learning that is relevant, useful and helps them feel competent. The Consent Burger is a great communication tool for adults to use with students to help them feel centred and included in their own learning. Check it out and let me know what you think!