More from the LERN article, "Your Experience in Teaching."
•Listen to your inner voice about how you might teach. Try some of what at first sounds outrageous - you’ll likely be surprised at how successful a seemingly outrageous idea turns out to be.
•Take a risk. You’ll feel better; your students will enjoy it. Don’t worry that no one has tried the teaching approach you have in mind before, or you can’t find any research about it. Try it anyway. Your idea just might set a new direction for teaching adults.
•Most of the time don’t share your new idea about teaching with a fellow teacher until you’ve tried it with your students. You’ll too often hear, “Stay with what you know, it’s safer.”
•Watch what other people do — techniques speakers use to engage an audience, strategies discussion leaders employ to involve people and so on. Borrow the ideas and try them out in your classrooms.
•Accept failure as a stepping stone to success. Unless you fail occasionally, you aren’t trying anything new.
Experience can be a wonderful and important teacher, particularly if we learn how to reflect on and understand what we have experienced. But experience can also be a block to change because it imprints in our minds particular ways of doing things. As teachers of adults, we must learn to recognize when experience is a good and proper teacher, and when it blocks our learning.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
When Experience Is Not the Best Teacher
From the article, "Your Experience in Teaching" on the LERN website, comes some things to ponder.
Many of us have long subscribed to the slogan, “Experience is the best teacher.” We tell younger people that as they gain experience, they will build on what they learn. This is true, to a point. But can
experience also be a deterrent to change, a block to our learning or a barrier to new approaches and new ideas? The answer is yes, in too many situations.
For many of us, our experience can prevent us from looking at things in new ways. Likewise, our students: as much as we prize their experiences and try to incorporate them into our teaching, their experiences often prevent them from seeing things in new ways, from learning new perspectives, from truly learning in a profound way.
What can we do about this? How can we put in our own experience, as well as help our students see a new perspective?
•Develop a skeptical, constantly questioning attitude of your experience. Ask, “Do I want to do this again, in the same way?”
•Figure out ways of making the usual, unusual, the ordinary, extraordinary.
When things are horizontal, make them vertical. When they are squares, make them circles. Ask, “What is the opposite of this?” Or, “What are five ways of teaching this topic that I haven’t tried before?”
Many of us have long subscribed to the slogan, “Experience is the best teacher.” We tell younger people that as they gain experience, they will build on what they learn. This is true, to a point. But can
experience also be a deterrent to change, a block to our learning or a barrier to new approaches and new ideas? The answer is yes, in too many situations.
For many of us, our experience can prevent us from looking at things in new ways. Likewise, our students: as much as we prize their experiences and try to incorporate them into our teaching, their experiences often prevent them from seeing things in new ways, from learning new perspectives, from truly learning in a profound way.
What can we do about this? How can we put in our own experience, as well as help our students see a new perspective?
•Develop a skeptical, constantly questioning attitude of your experience. Ask, “Do I want to do this again, in the same way?”
•Figure out ways of making the usual, unusual, the ordinary, extraordinary.
When things are horizontal, make them vertical. When they are squares, make them circles. Ask, “What is the opposite of this?” Or, “What are five ways of teaching this topic that I haven’t tried before?”
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