Last week, I stepped in front of the AP World History class at my student-teaching placement to go over a couple concepts for about 10 minutes. This week, after watching a video clip of those first moments in front of a class, I turned to my friend, "What'd you think?" He replied, "It seems like one of the hardest parts about teaching is that you have to go through a process of being painfully wrenched from the comfort of being a student." These words resonated with me: "one of the hardest parts about teaching is that you have to go through a process of being painfully wrenched from the comfort of being a student."
I've always been an apt pupil, to reference Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. And I have long admired my best teachers for helping me to master new concepts and explore new ways of looking at the world. I have grown accustomed to life as a student, passively allowing teachers to guide me. The act of demonstrating my knowledge was extremely gratifying. But teaching is not about giving myself kudos for what I know and eagerly sharing my ideas with the class. In fact, it's quite the reverse. To become a teacher, I have to figure out how my teachers so artfully engaged me as a student.
My friend said something else that will stick with me: "As a teacher, you have to engage other people, which is really hard because humans aren't predisposed to want to do that." There seems to be a sort of physical inertia that prevents us from wanting to learn from others and reformulate information to help others understand; it is just easier, and more comfortable, to attentively absorb what books say and what the teacher or professor tells us in a lecture. Teaching is about shaking this mindset, overcoming the inertia that makes even the best students prefer to be passive, introverted learners. It requires us to learn how to ask real questions and to create an environment where students engage in extroverted learning. Teaching will be about facilitating a dialogue that encourages students to share their discoveries and ideas.
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I have found the same struggle. When students ask me a question my natural inclination is to feed them the answer. I view it from a student perspective and give an answer not ask another question in order to better understand where they are in the process of understanding the concept. The transition from student to teacher is a lot different than what I had initially thought.
ReplyDeleteI see so much disengagement-the inertia you talk about-in the classes I observe. Students are so used to passive learning and have become bored...and when you present a lesson that does not hand them the answer, they get upset. I am glad you discuss how it is our responsibility to engage kids-to not accept the status quo of passive learning-and to create a classroom filled with intellectually curious students.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do think your friend makes an apt observation, I would also add (you suggest this...) that part of what fuels this inertia is socialization. If we learn--implicitly--that being a student is mostly about passively absorbing information, then we're likely to adopt that mode of behavior. Maybe I'm a hopeless optimist, but I believe that people (especially young people) are naturally curious, so I'd argue that there's more reason to be optimistic about attaining an active learning relationship with our students than might otherwise appear.
ReplyDeleteWherever you're journaling, or keeping records of your teaching year, take note of all the little moments where you see that spark in your students. You'll need to be persistent, so having some reminders handy of what's possible will help you remain willing to experiment, and will keep you moving forward.
What a thought provoking post. It made me think about my own learning style in high school, mostly introvert, and which teachers and methods engaged me most in class.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we have a special benefit to the career we're going into - most careers don't allow people to be the recipient (the student) of the service before they are in essence, the giver of the service (teaching). I mean I guess all doctors were at one point patients, but still, my point is, I think there's a lot we can learn from our student days to help us become better teachers. :)