A teacher’s secret
If you are an educator for both young or old students, there is a secret I discovered and wish to share with you during the various years I was in adult education.
I often was requested to teach abstract, sometimes complicated subjects, concepts that only computer enthusiasts knew how to understand moreover knew how to put into practice. One of the recurrent examples was to find a simple way to explain how a spreadsheet works, the elementary notions in calculus thus putting into practice the basics learned in school classes. It amused me to tease my students with certain simple elements in arithmetic, the precedence of parentheses among other challenges that they failed frequently, of course I never told them they must have skipped certain classes, just looking at their facial expression, it was nos rocket science to understand many regretted having skipped their classes to go out unnoticed for a puff or eventually smoke a joint. In the meantime…
Yes I’m coming to the secret, bare with me for a few more lines.
To tell the truth, if we put children in a class and bring them again many years later, some not to say most of their behaviour will rarely change. There is nos age to define a student’s attitude, they keep their habits, the way they take notes, none or every word the teacher says, sitting in front or at the back define how motivated they are, and so on, we may call it the many wonders of human social attitude. I had students who came to class with a long list of questions thus being in need of more professional business consultation than attending a training class (the anxious type of people who thought they would have mastered their knowledge about a specific software).
In my classes it was simple, I had to satisfy management’s requirements and make sure learners did grasp and understood, only time taught me to come up with a completely different paradigm.
I often insisted on keeping closed books closed, however covering the entire course plan then, I did my very best to focus on the teacher’s role, as books would remain with them not their instructor.
Yes, yes the secret, I’m getting there I made you languish too much. So my secret was/is very simple, it is not new except that we no longer use it as it deserves. No matter what age your students are, there’s one thing that glues them into their chairs in order to listen to you.
Do we not say that the teacher is required to play several roles during his working life? I offer you the most beautiful role that I had to play during all my years of teaching, that of storyteller. My lectures turned into stories being told about the subject I needed to cover. The magic words that gave me total attention in class (adult class) were: Once upon a time! After I could speak about anything of interest as long as I was able to put it into a narrative story format. I used this approach with many people, during the ten years I worked for an engineering firm. The most rewarding was when presenting to the upper management, they were first amused yet very rapidly engaged asking questions of interest, it meant they were grasping the concepts and learning.
I once had a group of civil engineers who was attending an introduction course to the fundamental of VIsual Basic programming language (a course of three times 6 hours it was finally completed in just 9 hours of time instead of the 18 hours that were planned initially. One of the other things I learned was to see how sincerely people love to share their on the job stories, their successes, failures and lessons learned. During various workshops I conducted, I let them teach each other from their own experiences.
It didn’t matter what the ministry, regional management or school management wanted. Telling them the story of my own learning would let them always remember my teaching as a token of gratitude. How could I ever forget one of my students who recognized me on the way to downtown Montreal. A big smile, she said aloud: Hello my teacher! To her friend’s surprise, she said to her: This gentleman was my teacher, he taught me so many things, he told us stories during the class we were attending! I wished we had teachers like him when we were at school! When out of inspiration, just keep in mind the bedtime stories, I loved these moments, and I wished they never end.
Until our next chat
Michel © – 2023
It is all about social good! 