Many people get into teaching in response to their parental instincts, and never get past the "give, give give" attitude. Sadly, many teachers are willing to give to the extent that they fail to make self-reliance and responsibility part of what they're trying to teach. One manifestation of this is that many teachers feel obligated to answer any and all questions. Since students will not think for themselves if they don't have to, the number of questions multiplies, and harried teachers wonder why they always feel exhausted.

Only to the extent that we teach students to be self-sufficient do we actually accomplish any educational goal. Fortunately, in addition to instilling this important mindset in students, teaching becomes much less difficult when you stop taking responsibility for things that you could better leave to the students.

Here are five things that I find myself saying that place responsibility back on the students, where it belongs:

"I don't answer that question." This is my response when a student walks into class asking "is there a quiz today?", or "what was the homework for today?"  If I fulfill my responsibility to tell the class the assignment and a student doesn't write it down, it is wrong of me to repeat myself. Repeating the assignment undermines the message that the student is responsible for his or her work. It raises the expectation that other teachers should be equally accomodating when students don't fulfill their responsibility. Your responsibility before class is to get ready for class, to greet students as they enter, or to deal with someone who truly needs you. Besides, aren't there 29 other people in the room who know what the assignment is?

"Read it again." When instructions to a grammar point or an assignment are clearly written in English, or comprehensible Spanish, explaining, or "going over" the instructions to students sends the wrong message--that students are not responsible to use the reading skills that taxpayers have paid tens of thousands of dollars to teach them. The vast majority of students who are unable to understand instructions simply haven't tried, either because they're used to teachers spoon-feeding them instructions, or because not understanding is a convenient excuse for not doing the work.

"Use your judgment." A good all-purpose phrase that shows your confidence in the student's maturity, entices the student to wake up and think, and releases you from energy-consuming micromanagement all at the same time!

"Which way gives you the most practice?" Students tend to be so focused on getting the "right" answer to get the all-important "points", that they ask unnecessary questions when faced with more than one possible correct answer, or an indefinite number of possible answers. I've seen students doing un-graded assignments wait for me to ask which of two possible correct answers they should choose much longer than it would have taken to simply write in both of them, which would have resulted in more practice. Try to create an atmosphere in which students understand that all work is done for practice, not just points, and that you are not interested in penalizing independent thought on technicalities. I sometimes leave things vague intentionally, just to make students think.

"How do you say it?" Spanish teachers should not pronounce written words for students. Spanish is a phonetic language. Teach students the system, then hold them responsible for using it. To do otherwise is to say, in effect, "I've taught you how to pronounce words in Spanish, but I don't expect you to be able to do it. It's too hard for you, you need me". When they say "how do you say this word?", I say "how do you say it". 95% of the time, the student will say it correctly, because the pronunciation rules in Spanish are so simple. She has not just pronounced one word--she has gained confidence that will enable her to pronounce with less hesitation the next difficult word she encounters.

What does your neighbor think the answer is? During written work, allowing students to ask each other questions gives each student a personal tutor. If you try to answer all the questions, many students will become idle (and we all know what they say about idle hands!) as they wait for you to attend to them. In my experience, the most productive times in grammar instruction are the times in which students with conflicting answers have to refer to their written material to discover which answer is correct. I often follow up "what does your neighbor think the answer is?" with "argue about it, you'll figure it out." Your role during in-class work is to make sure all members of the class are engaged, to put people together who can help each other, and to identify difficult items that you may need to alert the entire class to.