Teaching and learning are a process. It starts with the students, and moves to the classroom. Teaching is like learning. It’s a learning that is happening, in the classroom and throughout the lives of the students. However, the learning is not always linear, and can be difficult or frustrating.
The problems of teaching are sometimes described as being “linear” or “repetitive.” Students often complain that the students are “repetitive” or “linear.” And so the teacher’s job is to take the students and the learning “one step at a time.” Many of our students report that they are in the classroom with a teacher for years and years. And the students also report that the teacher’s job is to take the students “one step at a time.
The problem is that teachers are often taught to learn linear, repetitive ways of teaching, and then students complain they are often told to learn linear, repetitive ways of learning.
The problem is that teachers are often taught to teach without any self-awareness of how they are doing it. It’s like teaching a car to drive, and then complaining about how it drives like a human driving.
This is one of the biggest problems I see with new education curriculum, and the biggest reason that I’m a reluctant teacher. I’ve seen programs that use a linear curriculum that just repeats the same thing over and over and over and over, while giving students no self-awareness of how they are doing it.
I don’t think that we have to explain to students exactly how they are doing it, but we can talk about how we are doing it. We can talk about what we are doing and what it feels like to do it, and how that makes learning easier and more enjoyable. The same goes for teaching. As you teach, ask the students what they think they are doing and why.
You could even try to develop a more self-aware personality, but you’re not very good at that anyway. So maybe you will need to be reminded a lot more often that you are not “doing it right” by having a teacher on your “team.
I’ve not had any real formal teaching in a long time so I guess I should be an expert on how to make good teachers. But I still don’t know how to do that. There are so many things in education that are so easy to do wrong, that you don’t even know you are doing wrong. I guess I need to learn how to do that.
Teachers and educators are important. But they are also not the most important thing in your life. In many cases, they are the most important thing in your life. But in most cases, the people you choose to work with are not the people who will be most happy with your work product.
The problem is teachers and educators don’t always work as we think they would.
