'Teach my child' V 'Teach my child to learn'

If you’ve ever observed one of my lessons, you will know that you don’t hear my voice as much as you hear my students’ voices.

This was something that made me stand out in mainstream education. I was often told how amazing it was that I would ‘allow my students to have such a powerful voice in my lessons’. And I didn’t really understand this until I started observing other teachers myself.

What I would often notice was that they would be the ones talking for 80-90% of the time. The students would be passively listening to the teacher for 20-25 minutes before being told to go to to their tables to complete their learning. Learning simply does not happen in this way. We do not learn by being passive listeners. We learn by doing. We learn by asking questions. We learn by getting things wrong and then trying again and again and again. Sadly, with a class full of 20-30+ students, one human being cannot do all of this. And if they can, they cannot do it well.

I taught a Sample lesson last week and at the end of the lesson, my student’s father asked me this question, ‘But will you actually teach him? You didn’t really say much in the lesson!’

Here was my exact response to him.

I was teaching, you just didn’t realise it because I gave centre stage to your son.

He was blown away by my response.

Who cares about what the teacher has to say? Yes of course, teachers need to teach new concepts but the best teaching (in my opinion), is the teaching where children are left to their own devices.

So interesting that those teachers who would talk at their students for 20-25 minutes and then tell their students to go to their tables would then have 5-6 children with their hands up asking for help. Why didn’t they know what they had to do? Why did they need their teacher to talk at them again for 2-5 minutes explaining what she’d just been explaining for 20-25 minutes?

I am a strong believer in teaching my students to learn. In giving them the opportunity to see a new concept and give it a go before being instructed how to do it.

Parents freak out about this. They don’t want their child to get it wrong. Oh please let your child get things wrong. And tell them that it is okay. Just as okay as them getting things right.

Let’s support our next generation to be independent learners. To be resilient learners. To be determined learners. To be passionate learners. To be able to persevere. To want to learn. Not to be told what to do but rather be supported to be able to it themselves.