Called On, Not Called Out

On cold-calling, failure, and why being put on the spot might be a gift

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Photo by Austin on Unsplash

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Cold-calling only works if teachers first build a healthy culture of failure.

The cold call can’t be to humiliate or embarrass. Curiosity has to be the reason. I’ve said in many previous articles that I am constantly showing students my own writing and my own mess-ups, and I remind them all the time that I identify as a “recovering perfectionist.” Writing, thinking, and reading widely and well take practice. I’ve been humbled on my own as a student, as a reader, and in front of a classroom, but how I react in front of them when I am wrong teaches them something too. Everything is a teaching opportunity. Nothing in my classroom will ever be a humiliation tactic, especially the cold-call.

What I love, and many others hate, about English is that a lot of what we do doesn’t have a “right” answer. Some topics are delightfully ambiguous, which is where the beauty lies. The answer is never going to be 17. I am not going to herd a kid to 17, but I may question and have them defend the answer they do give, expand on it, hold their ground, or change their mind in real time. This is Socratic, really: the goal was never my imagined answer. Their reasoning is what I want exposed. It teaches me and the others in the classroom how we get to our conclusions live, on air.

This is exactly where the sensitivity of the cold call comes in. It’s a valuable feeling to train. Panic. Omg, it’s me. Okay, what do I think? Ummm… etc. Until the student comes up with something, and hopefully they also think. It’s okay; she respects me, and I know she will give me grace if I am wrong. Which, in my class, is always the case.

I model failure. I encourage it, and sometimes when I do cold-call a student, it isn’t to embarrass them; it is out of curiosity because I haven’t heard from them in a while. I always thank students for trying, and I try my best to curate a classroom where students feel confident taking academic and thinking risks. If they don’t, I’m not really sure I can call myself a good educator.

I once had a student literally crawl under the table when I called on her. Charlotte, seventh grade. I didn’t make a thing of it in the moment. I kept teaching, let the class move on, and waited until the bell rang to address the situation.

After class, I coaxed her out, and we talked about what it meant that she’d rather disappear under a table than just answer a question. I helped her see that her hiding was so much more exposing than her answer ever could have been. I don’t think she’d thought about it that way before. Her sense of self grew a lot over the time I had her, and I think that honest conversation was part of why.

I know this works because I’ve been on the other side of it, too. I learned more math than I ever have in my 7th-grade class because my teacher, Ms. Todt, maintained a healthy pressure in the air. She would call on us randomly with her back to us while working out a problem. Did I love it? No. Did it make me anxious? Yes. Did I feel less confident? Sometimes, but she did it to all of us. What did happen was I had to be very present and ready all the time, which is key in a well-functioning classroom. There was never a time when I could safely check out.

None of this is one-size-fits-all, though. I’ve been through the wringer as a teacher, and I know what works and when to push, when to pull back, when to ignore, and when to address directly, and of course, when to call in reinforcements. Knowing what works when takes serious observation and experience.

Teaching is complex because people are complex, but I respect my students enough to call upon them to rise to the occasion because one day, they may truly have to do so with much higher stakes.

A lot of that complexity comes down to age and setting. I’ve taught this same way in both middle school and high school, but what it looks like shifts. Respecting students and treating them as though they’re a little older than they are, within reason, is essential at either level.

None of this works, either, if I only ask it of them and never of myself. I understand anxiety because I myself am incredibly anxious. This past year, I have run Professional Development sessions for adults, and it was almost the death of me because the imposter syndrome was so real. However, anxiety is just a feeling, and coping strategies need to be accessed and practiced so the feelings aren’t as intimidating anymore. The more we face something, the easier it gets. I love how Irish English handles hard feelings. You don’t say “I am sad.” You say sadness is on you, like weather passing through, not a fact about who you are. We don’t talk about emotions that way enough. Feelings aren’t facts. We get to decide which ones we let take root in our day-to-day lives. I say all of this to my students, too, because if I want them to be comfortable naming what they feel under pressure, I have to be willing to do it first.

The cold-calling strategy isn’t about whether students enjoy it. It is a matter of whether it grows good people and whether the method is valuable in the long run. And I think it is. I don’t use it every day, but when I do, students know it is coming, and I have given them plenty of thinking and writing time to be prepared. I keep every student’s name on a popsicle stick, sorted by class period, in its own jar. When I cold-call, I pull from the jar, which keeps things fair. No one gets singled out, no one gets picked on, and no one gets skipped over for a whole semester because I forgot they were in the back row or because they are good at hiding. Often, I’ll go through the whole jar in one sitting, stick by stick, just to make sure everyone gets pulled. Sometimes they do embarrass themselves, and that is okay, because learning also requires mistakes.

This isn’t new. Long before it had a name, teachers understood being on the hook sharpens people. It isn’t comfortable, and it’s not supposed to be. Chiseling hurts. A real academic bar means you can’t just show up and coast; you have to work, you have to push, you have to spar with the material, with your peers, and with your own shortcomings. We don’t have that much time, and every class period that lets a student stay quiet and invisible is one in which they don’t have to think. Cold-calling is one of the last places left in a classroom where a student can’t opt out.

This culture has to be grown, the way anything does. I am never expecting perfection. I am, however, expecting effort. True, sometimes annoying and frustrating effort, because it is a non-negotiable in any growth format.

Effort, like this, builds better readers and writers and essential stamina. Being able to process your thoughts quickly and on the spot is a life skill that stretches far beyond the classroom. Pressure in life really never goes away. Being called on in class isn’t trauma. That word gets used too easily now, and every time it is, it cheapens what real trauma means for the student in that same room carrying a parent’s illness, a custody battle, a house that isn’t stable. An unprepared answer doesn’t belong next to any of that.

Jennifer, who writes The Real Classroom, described standing in a staff meeting while a beach ball got tossed around the room, dreading it landing on her, having to come up with something funny or interesting on the spot in front of a hundred colleagues. This dread is what brought her back to why she walked away from cold-calling in her own classroom years ago. Her argument isn’t that cold-calling is wrong for everyone. It’s that she doesn’t think it reliably measures what we assume it measures, and that knowing her students as individuals. Who lights up when called on, who needs a quiet nod first, who would spend the whole period afraid, should drive participation, not one strategy applied to all thirty of them.

She’s also made the case that the real fear isn’t getting an answer wrong. Being watched getting it wrong is the real fear. She’s pointed out that the same student, alone with her, answering the same question, wouldn’t hesitate. The other thirty kids in the room are what make it frightening, and sometimes that fear becomes one more piece of evidence a student collects about who they are.

I think she’s right about all of it. I just landed somewhere different. A wrong answer only becomes that kind of evidence if the culture around it allows it to, and I’d rather spend my energy building that productive culture than avoiding the moment altogether. The social cost is real. So is the skill of being able to sit inside that discomfort and come out the other side still standing. I think this skill is worth more than the discomfort costs.

The question underneath both our pieces is really the same one: who’s doing the asking, and why? That’s what decides whether being put on the spot costs a student something or gives them something. And it’s the same thing that decides whether being called on, anywhere in life, is a burden or a privilege.

The question is never whether we will be called upon. It’s when. There’s always a healthy anxiety in it: when your expertise is valued, when you have the final say, when a friend brings up something difficult, when you have to write your father’s eulogy, when you have to speak on someone else’s behalf. All of it will have you doubting who you are.

Being called upon is a gift. Not only is it an opportunity to show your skills, but it is also a chance to show up for yourself, for others, and, done right, it can be a confidence builder and a true shot at intrinsic growth.

It is an honor to have something to say and have people listen.

As always, take good notes. 📝

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