So today I came to the somewhat painful realization that I chronically find myself learning "the hard way."
For example, last week I began tutoring a new student, a boy in grade 9 who needs help with reading comprehension. I felt that I totally bombed our first session - it was so bad. The whole hour was awkward and I felt completely useless in helping him.
I spent a lot of time afterwards scrutinizing every second of the session to figure out what I could have done better. It eventually dawned on me that I spent 20 minutes of the session asking him about himself and then skipped right over the part where I tell him about myself and dove head first into some serious math problem solving questions. Duh! He probably felt extremely alienated by the mysterious stranger who knew everything about him but who he didn't know anything about. It's no wonder he was uncomfortable and struggled heavily through the math (though I didn't realize the struggling was due to the discomfort with me and not the math until today's session when he didn't struggle nearly as much). Not surprisingly, today's session began with me telling him a few things about me so he could get to know me a bit.
Anyways, good teachers always spend time introducing themselves to their students in order to facilitate a positive learning environment - usually before the students even introduce themselves! And I knew this! Intellectually, I could have said with certainty that it's important to let the students get to know the teacher.
The thing is, though, that there's a big difference between knowing the right way to do something and knowing the right way to do something. Today I realized that I often need to know things (i.e. I need to learn them the hard way) before I can actually capitalize on the benefits of knowing those things.
When I first came to this realization I was upset with myself because it's so much more costly to learn things the hard way: I negatively impacted my relationship with the new student which resulted in a lot of wasted time and energy during the session. But then I realized that my mistake lead me to a deeper and more meaningful understanding of why it's important to let students get to know me.
This leads me to a second realization: I operate more effectively when I know the reasoning behind what I'm doing. In not doing the thing that I intellectually knew was the best thing, I was subconsciously questioning if it was really the best thing; in other words, I wasn't taking anyone's word for it. While this particular situation may have been an acceptable instance to simply take others' word for it, I'm proud to be a questioner.
Being a questioner at heart is something I feel is important for learning in general. I hope to instill in my students the kind of curiosity that encourages questioning in a kind of gently rebellious manner! Sure, more often than not, the questioning will lead back to a confirmation of the conventional wisdom, but the learning will be much deeper and more meaningful than if the answer was simply accepted at face value. For me, learning things the hard way is very valuable process.
Until next time,
- Miss K.
For example, last week I began tutoring a new student, a boy in grade 9 who needs help with reading comprehension. I felt that I totally bombed our first session - it was so bad. The whole hour was awkward and I felt completely useless in helping him.
I spent a lot of time afterwards scrutinizing every second of the session to figure out what I could have done better. It eventually dawned on me that I spent 20 minutes of the session asking him about himself and then skipped right over the part where I tell him about myself and dove head first into some serious math problem solving questions. Duh! He probably felt extremely alienated by the mysterious stranger who knew everything about him but who he didn't know anything about. It's no wonder he was uncomfortable and struggled heavily through the math (though I didn't realize the struggling was due to the discomfort with me and not the math until today's session when he didn't struggle nearly as much). Not surprisingly, today's session began with me telling him a few things about me so he could get to know me a bit.
Anyways, good teachers always spend time introducing themselves to their students in order to facilitate a positive learning environment - usually before the students even introduce themselves! And I knew this! Intellectually, I could have said with certainty that it's important to let the students get to know the teacher.
The thing is, though, that there's a big difference between knowing the right way to do something and knowing the right way to do something. Today I realized that I often need to know things (i.e. I need to learn them the hard way) before I can actually capitalize on the benefits of knowing those things.
When I first came to this realization I was upset with myself because it's so much more costly to learn things the hard way: I negatively impacted my relationship with the new student which resulted in a lot of wasted time and energy during the session. But then I realized that my mistake lead me to a deeper and more meaningful understanding of why it's important to let students get to know me.
This leads me to a second realization: I operate more effectively when I know the reasoning behind what I'm doing. In not doing the thing that I intellectually knew was the best thing, I was subconsciously questioning if it was really the best thing; in other words, I wasn't taking anyone's word for it. While this particular situation may have been an acceptable instance to simply take others' word for it, I'm proud to be a questioner.
Being a questioner at heart is something I feel is important for learning in general. I hope to instill in my students the kind of curiosity that encourages questioning in a kind of gently rebellious manner! Sure, more often than not, the questioning will lead back to a confirmation of the conventional wisdom, but the learning will be much deeper and more meaningful than if the answer was simply accepted at face value. For me, learning things the hard way is very valuable process.
Until next time,
- Miss K.