Teaching: Realizing the Function of “Remove Ignorance”
As practicing Value Engineers, we always look things in the eyes of function. One of the function definitions which touched me was the function of teaching/education. The function of teaching/education is “Remove Ignorance”. But many of us in our daily life try to define this function of teaching as “Expose Subject”, “Complete Syllabus”, “Excite Creativity”, “Bring Attention”, “Create interest”, “Teach Subject” etc. But when we closely observe the act of teaching in totality it is the conversation between two human beings of sharing knowledge. The purpose of this conversation is achieved only when the recipient fully absorbs what the teacher is sharing.
We are all teachers throughout our life in some way or other. At least we teach to our kids if not a regular teacher/trainer/coach/consultant/evangelist.
Recently I had a chance to observe the teaching of two teachers in a school and both of them followed a unique method which touched my heart. At the end of the observation, I thanked them for their assertive teaching and requested them to continue that way of teaching with them. I thought it also help us since we also do teaching some way or other in our daily life.
Method-1: Assure the Understanding at every step of teaching.
This teacher in the mathematics class explains the problem, discusses the methods available to solve the problem, workouts all the methods. The most important thing she does is that she asks after explain and solving the problem on the board that who are all not understood? The students who didn’t understood the method raises their hand and the teacher converse with the student and clears the ignorance and ensures that she understood and then move to the next exercise. Here the key thing we need to appreciate is the transparent and fearless and most important thing is the respectful atmosphere she created for the students to openly express their ignorance and then remove them through her explanation.
Method -2: Help them to understand their shortfalls and make them to focus on them
In the other class where the students need to do the exercise as teams, one of the teams finished the task quickly and causing the distraction in the class. The teacher asked that team to be quiet and cross verify their workouts whether they have done it correctly. That team just acted like checking and once again started making noise, play and distracting the other students. The teacher simply went near that team and verified their workout and found that their solution are wrong and it happened due to jumping of steps to finish the exercise quickly. The teacher made them understand the importance of doing the things systematically and ensuring the correctness of the solution arrived. There after that team started focusing on their task.
In such situations, most of us normally ask the distracting students to be quiet or ask them to go out and do something else or try to pin point some fault and warn them in front of all. Instead that teacher directly intervened the distracting team and made them realize the importance of time and verifying the solution instead of shouting “Finished First”.
This observation triggered my mind that are you doing something similar whenever you are teaching/coaching/consulting? Yes to some extend but not like the teacher for every step. Why can’t embrace it fully?
I am planning to follow it next time I am teaching/coaching.
What do you say?