Category Archives: Teaching

Learning, Personal Growth, Teaching

Make That Mistake!

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We were nearly to her classroom door when I complimented my third grade friend. We’d just read together–actually she read to me–and I thought she’d done quite well. She impressed me with her vocabulary when she replied that she was actually much more “fluent” when she read to herself. I of course asked why.

Her reply was about being self concious and therefore “embarassed” when she made a mistake reading outloud. I confess my reply was a straight shot from the hip, “Don’t you ever be embarassed over mistakes when you are reading with me. Mistakes are an important and natural part of learning. And they actually can be fun.”

Usually these conversations are more about how the mind works faster than the mouth, but for some reason her discomfort seemed wrong. Of course we should challenge others to do well and to a healthy extent avoid errors. But the fear of failure can be paralyzing.

Later the same day I ran into my “giggler” friend. A year ago she was reading to me and when she came to the word “briefcase” she read “beer case.” For reasons I still don’t understand, her mistake struck me very funny. She and I ended up with the giggles for longer than was probably appropriate. She still remembers that day and the mistake–fortunately in a happy way that makes us both smile. I think it’s important that we laughed at the mistake; we didn’t laugh at her.

Recent studies are showing that students perform better in school and felt more confident when they were told that failure was a normal part of learning, bolstering a growing body of research that suggests much of the same. When I’m working with adults, I find that an important part of the process is to create a “safe” learning environment where mistakes can be made and judgement gets suspended. To that end, I’ve adopted the “Learner’s Bill of Rights” developed by the folks at Trainer’s Warehouse. Consider two of the ten.

IV. No unreasonable searches and seizures.

While facilitators may search for a right answer, learners have the right to make mistakes. If one is unable to answer a question correctly, the instructor will not cause embarassment.

and

VII. The right to a jury of peers.

You are entitled to a classroom of peers who will not judge or jeer, but make you feel safe and supported when faced with new challenges.

We would do well to consider creating a safe learning environment for others and ourselves. I remember once being part of a team that suffered a major mistake. The team leader said, “Well, we won’t make that mistake again.” I replied, “Nope, we’ll make some different ones.” He was not amused.

Creating a safe learning environment is about a willingness to allow mistakes that is balanced with a desire to “do well.” It’s really about avoiding mistakes, not fearing or focusing on them.

(For copies of the Learner’s Bill of Rights, please contact Trainer’s Warehouse at 800-299-3770 or www.trainerswarehouse.com.)

Learning, Teaching

Those Who Can’t Do…

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Most people are familiar with the maxim, “Those who can’t do, teach.” We can speculate regarding its beginnings, but it’s come to be a bit of a “slam” on teachers as it implies those who fail at doing things can always teach. I am hoping I can raise the maxim without raising the debate because I think the maxim suggests an interesting question: “What about those who can’t teach? What do they do?”

I suppose we could have a “complete the maxim contest.” Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, (fill in the blank).

See, once you dig below the implication that those who fail can always fall back on teaching, there’s an even more insidious implication that teaching doesn’t require very much skill. If you believe that, consider the experience of a recent adult student–and try to believe that the point of the story is not to brag about MY skill–it is to demonstrate the lack of logic behind thinking teaching doesn’t require skill.

She came to me for some help with a fairly specific subject. (I’m omitting lots of details to avoid embarrassing anybody.) Our initial discussion included her observation, “I really suck at this” and a high level of doubt that she would or could improve much.  So here we have a situation where not only does she think she’s not very skilled–she also doesn’t have much confidence in me as a teacher. We did have a little chat about how we unconsciously prove ourselves correct.

We didn’t have to talk long before I figured out at least one reason she didn’t have much confidence in my teaching ability or herself. The person who’d been “teaching” her apparently sucked at teaching. He is a subject matter expert without question; but that’s a big part of the problem. He keeps on teaching the material HE understands but doesn’t understand why his student “doesn’t get it.”

I can help him with that. She isn’t “getting it” in a large part because he isn’t very good at explaining (teaching) it. Let me hasten to add, I’m not saying he’s a bad person. He actually does care about this student. He also obviously cares a great deal about the subject. He just doesn’t “care” (Ben Franklin observed, “Ignorance is bliss.”) about how he teaches. In fairness, it’s not his profession. But at some level, he apparently subscribes to the idea that teaching isn’t very difficult.

So I worked with the student for a while, ultimately sending her home with a lot of stickers on her sweater. “Good job! Wow! A+! You did it!” She’s pretty sure her kids are going to think that’s both funny and cool. I’m not naive enough to claim she “got it” all and neither is she.  But she was at least wearing a smile with her stickers and feeling like she was making some learning progress.

I can’t help but wonder if she’ll tell her “teacher” that she may suck at the subject, but he really sucks at teaching. Another debate we often have in the teaching arena is whether or not the teacher has to be good at or well-educated in a particular subject or discipline to teach it. Personally, I’d like to declare that an invalid debate.

There is a proverb attributed to Buddha that almost gets it right with the claim, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” That makes it sound a bit mystical and magical when it’s actually about a simple balance. There are teaching skills and there are learning skills. Both can and should be developed. A skilled teacher and a skilled learner create that magic. Suggesting that teaching requires little or no skill isn’t fair–it makes the learner totally responsible for the learning. Suggesting that learning requires little or no skill isn’t fair either because that makes the teacher totally responsible for the teaching. Maybe we should re-write the maxim.

Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, learn.

 Among the many things that can be learned is how to teach! In the last few decades we have been discovering some exciting new ways we can teach people because we are beginning to understand how people learn. So to those who think teaching isn’t very difficult, I agree, it’s not–unless you want to do it well. And you won’t do it well until you understand that teaching is really about learning.

Classes and Courses, Learning, Personal Growth, Teaching

Nap Time!

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I just took a little self-quiz to see how much I “know about learning.” The quiz was recommended by The Training Doctor and I’m pleased to note that I did fairly well because I’ve pretty much . I’m increasingly convinced what we think is about teaching is actually about learning.

Anyway, one of the answers to a question included the observation “many experts believe taking a nap after learning something new aides learning.”

Woo! This explains the behavior of some of my students!

It also means I’ll be able to justify more naps!

Seriously, there is a lot to be said for naps. Perhaps I should offer a course on napping. Imagine the potential for integrating experiential learning! “Do not disturb–learning taking place” would take on a whole new meaning.

If you’d like to take the quiz, follow this link. After you’ve taken the quiz, have a nap!

Personal Growth, Teaching

When Reading Is About Writing… and writing is about reading

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Stephen King says, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write. Simple as that.” That’s okay advice for people who want to write. Writing is definitely about reading. As one who loves to do both I could probably have a lot of fun with this–including wondering how many writers love to read what they have written.

Many folks know that I have worked with second and third graders on a volunteer basis for quite a few years. Much of that work is geared to encourage them to read–and, hopefully, to develop a love of learning. One of the little poems we share at the beginning of the year is:

The more you read, the more you know.
The more you know, the smarter you grow.
The smarter you grow, the stronger your voice.
When speaking your mind or making your choice.

After making some presentations to third graders in an assembly last year, I joked with a teacher about the need to offer some public speaking curriculum to third graders since none would give an acceptance speech. After thinking about it, maybe it’s not a joke. Afterall, we are trying to create an integrated education for our kids, right? And if reading makes you smart and being smarter makes your voice stronger, shouldn’t you be able to speak (and write) with greater confidence and skill–at any age?

Another interesting conversation I had recently was with a media and communications professional. We were sharing some thoughts about how much media has changed in the last decade and ended up discussing the need for “media relations” training for elementary school kids. These kids are, after all, at least social media darlings as young as babies when their parents post their photos on Facebook and other media. While this might be a topic unto itself, a reality is that a lot of kids are “stressed” over their image at increasingly young ages–partly because they haven’t learned how to manage that image.

It was bad enough when we had to worry about the Three R’s without these added challenges. But it’s also still arguable that a good foundation in “reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic” would certainly help with the challenges and perhaps allow children to have stronger voices and make better choices.

I’m increasingly pleased and impressed at the numbers of kids who talk about reading at home with a parent or grandparent. (I have a great story to share about the nine year old reading the newspaper to his grandfather in the waiting room at my chiropractor’s office.) While the work of making shared reading the norm is certainly far from complete, what about the second “R” — writing?

The good news is adults (and kids) are “writing” more… the bad news is much of that writing is poor at best. And the worse news is the media doesn’t always encourage or reward traditional writing skills. (I admit–it’s interesting to consider what Mark Twain might have “tweeted.” It’s even more interesting to consider what he would have thought about the challenge of writing something meaningful using less than 140 characters or letters.)

So here’s the challenge… if you are reading with a kid, why not introduce the idea of writing? If it seems a bit more intimidating there’s a good resource for you. You can download a 17 page guide with lots of tips for how to help your kids improve their writing skills–and make the process more natural and fun. (I suspect you could use a few of them on yourself as well!) A better idea might be to contact his or her teacher since not all school systems use the exact same vocabulary and curriculum, but in general any stimulation and encouragement will be good.

I’ve always been grateful to one college professor–“Mr. Bailey.” He taught us to write for sure, but more importantly, he made us write. Every day.  One sentence was allowed, but by the end of the semester it was hard to stop with one. You can get better simply by doing things.

We’re not going to talk about ‘rithmetic.

Yet.