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You’ll look for ways to improve the methods by which you teach as you transition from being a pupil, child, or subordinate towards being a teacher, parent, or leader. While riding the aging process none have yet escaped, we begin thinking about how we make our mark on the world that taught us all we know.
We begin presenting information in packages we hope others accept and understand. Much like growing as a student, the growth of a teacher doesn’t seem to reach a level of perfection; only a constant state of improvement. This article hopes to present advice as a supplement to your quest for improving as a teacher.
There will be times when your pupils become unmotivated to continue learning the information at hand. You will sense this lack of motivation through various avenues such as difficulty remaining focused, protests, and general cognitive absence in the time of learning. In attempting to correct your students’ lack of energy and focus, you can be inclined to adopt more forceful methods of teaching. This article hopes to warn you against adopting those forceful ways.
Interest Is Piqued by Teasing
A mismanagement of interest, is the culprit of the lapses in motivation to learn in others. The process of learning is seamless and possibly subconscious when our interest is high in the topic at hand. You may have experienced thoroughly enjoying an activity, and coming out of the experience realizing that you learned a lot as well. The experience of learning was not the focal point in the activities you took part in, but lessons were packaged in a way you gladly took home with you. Rather than following a standard set of methods for understanding information in such scenarios, we explore our interests and the things which tease their full unveiling. Let the times you experiences a peak in interest toward specific domains drive your philosophy of teaching others. Imagine there being a love story between the content and the student. Falling in love is what you want to endorse, and an arranged marriage is not the way to do it.
Your job as a teacher in any domain involves the introduction of content and presenting it in desirable ways. An important aspect of desire which many teachers do not take advantage of is the notion of the tease. Your first time making love to an idea involved a lot of teasing if you were to closely analyze. You may have seen a picture, read a sentence, or heard a phrase once and not gone back to explore those ideas further for a period of time. However, if what you saw, heard, or smelled hooked you on the line, you’d seek to explore further in an effort to satisfy your certain intellectual desire. The chances of you being engulfed in the certain thing that teased you prior, seem to be higher than if that thing was presented to you outright and in full.
An example of a tease is hearing a catchy song while shopping in a mall. You wouldn’t have access to all information about that song; such as who the artist is, and what the title of it happens to be. You would have been teased with a catchy hook and smooth melody. It would be stuck in your head, and you’d go on a mission to figure out what the title of the song is.
Master being a tease of information and present the “sexiest” aspects of ideas you aim to teach. Just as you may have heard the catchiest part of the song at the mall you shopped at, you may later find out that you luckily stumbled on the song’s best part. Finding out that the song has less catchy parts is not a disappointment as much as it is a lesson. The good parts you fell in love with would still be there, but you’d have learned of the not so good parts on your own accord. Allow your students to be introduced to information but not feel forced to make love to the aspects which comprise the lesson as a whole. If they’ve had enough, allow them to follow other desires. Trust the information you present to tease your students in implicit manners, without ever feeling the need to explicitly state the importance of the knowledge those lessons contain. Map out the catchiest melodies of the song you teach, and learn to present those melodies at the perfect time.
Timelines, Deadlines, and Grades
There will come time when the information you attempt to teach is simply bland and boring. Like a partner who does not know how to tease and entice feeling, these lessons will not give rise to any motivation for your students to discover and fall in love with. If timelines, deadlines, and grades depend on these lessons being understood, you’ll need transition towards teasing the outcome in learning rather than the idea itself.
There may be goals which are shared by your students as a whole but each one will have their own visions for the future. If a pupil is finding it difficult to fall in love with ideas you present, allow them to fall in love with what learning those ideas will result in. Clearly connect the dots between learning these ideas and the personal goals they have set for themselves. Tease the outcome, and allow them to clearly visualize success in their chosen domain. Let them ride their euphoric feelings of their goals being achieved, and explain the role bland lessons have within those vibrant visions.
Become a master at teasing information as well as visions. Learning is the process of falling in love with both, so be the match-maker who sets up the relationships at hand. Do not force love on others, as love cannot merely be switched on.