ONE of the first mistakes I made as a rookie teacher was focusing too much on the material as well as the strategies of teaching. I thought that the more material I could cover and the more strategies I knew and implemented in the classroom, I would be a better teacher. At around that time, I also joined Toastmasters in order to improve my public speaking skills.
And all that was good and interesting for me, but did they really make me a good teacher?
I would soon discover one very important truth -- one that all teachers know implicitly when they were students, but can’t seem to grasp once they stand in front of the classroom: Students don’t really care about the material, and neither have they any driving desire to cover as much of it as possible.
The one question always on students’ minds (whether they verbalize it or not) and the one question any teacher has to answer first before getting anyone marginally interested in what he has to say is this: Why is this subject important in my life? Will it be useful for me if I plan to be this or that in the future?
Teachers, please don’t give the standard “You’ll need this in college” line because while that answer may make some students shut up, it will never satisfy.
I’ve taught several subject areas but I noticed this question usually pops up when I’m teaching Math. Someone will eventually ask why they need x, y, or z in their lives, and I’ll tell them straight off: “Honestly, around 90% of you who won’t proceed to engineering or math-intensive courses or professions won’t really need this. But here’s the reality, you need to learn enough of the basics of what I’m teaching in order to graduate. And I promise I’ll only cover the basics. There’s material here that may be good for those of you who want to be math majors but I’ll leave that to you when you want to pursue that path in your life.”
“A secondary lesson here is that there are things in life we need to do, even if we don’t feel like doing them, if we want to achieve a certain objective.”
“For example,” I would ask, “how many of you want to graduate?”
All hands would go up. So I would say, “Well passing this subject is unfortunately a prerequisite for graduation. Now you can fight and resist it, but that will only make it harder for you, or you can try to look at it as a new challenge -- something new to learn, and that might make it less painful. I am under no illusion that all of you will come love math after this, but you need to know enough of it to pass it and my role is to simplify the material and help you along the way. I understand that you would rather not study this but this is how the system works so until we find a better way, this is how it goes.”
That was then, before I discovered democratic schools. Now I have indeed found a better way.
E-mail: andy@freethinking.me Website: www.freethinking.me