Welcome to EduTips, a side project of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast where I share one quick idea to make your teaching better.

This is Jennifer Gonzalez and I am your host.

This EduTip is sponsored by PairDec.

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Today's EduTip is find teachable moments in the downtime.

If you look at the total time you and your students spend together during the school day and subtract from that time the number of minutes you spend actually teaching, you'll end up with a lot of time.

For the sake of discussion, let's call this downtime, even though you and your students may or may not be actually enjoying time off.

It's the non-instructional time. The minutes when everyone is just coming into class, walking down the hall, waiting in line at the cafeteria or packing up to leave.

Even though you're not giving academic lessons during that time, there are still plenty of opportunities for teaching if you recognize them.

Here's an example. Say you're in your room on your planning period and you walk down to the office to get something.

On the way, you run into one of your students who is walking in the same direction.

As you walk together, you ask her what she has going on over the weekend and you learn that her stepmother is due to have a baby any day now, so the family is waiting for that.

You also pick up the vibe that the student is kind of apprehensive about the new arrival and how it will likely change the family dynamics.

You validate those feelings by saying that you would probably feel the same way in her shoes.

You share how completely overwhelmed you were by the birth of your first child and how things do eventually settle down, but it is still a big change.

In that 60 seconds, you learned an important fact about the student's life, which could definitely impact your classroom performance and emotional state, and you can follow up with her in the upcoming weeks by asking whether the baby has arrived and how everyone is adjusting.

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