Teaching kids and content
In which I share an axiom you will not want to miss
It’s a trope in education: A teacher says, “I don’t teach math (or English or history); I teach kids.”
What interests me is that we would ever consider the two as inseparable.
What I would say instead is “Teachers don’t teach content or kids; they foster a sustainable relationship between the two.”
If we drew three points in space — the content, the student(s), and the teacher — they wouldn’t mean much. They’d exist in isolation from each other. Rich, complex ships passing in the night. Or something.
It’s when we draw lines between these points that the picture starts to make sense.
What do the lines represent? Relationships.
The relationship between you (the teacher) and the kids.
The relationship between you (the teacher) and the content.
The relationship between the kids and the content.
And wherever there are relationships, there are emotions.
I love thinking about teaching as a Triangle. It’s so dynamic! And it draws our attention to the lines between rather than the dots at the vertices. It invites questions like
What do my students already know about this subject matter?
What do they want to know?
How do they feel about the subject matter?
How competent do they feel in the face of the subject matter?
What’s my relationship with this content I’m teaching?
What are my relationships with each of these students like?
Answering these questions and building the answers into your lesson design feels, to me, like a great recipe for tautness.
Tautness: the state of being taut.
Like a string that, when plucked, vibrates with sound and overtones.
Like a runner right before the sound of the starter gun.
Like a reader who can’t help turning the pages to find out what’s going to happen next.
Answering these questions makes it more likely that your students can be taut while being taught.
There’s the unmissable and (I daresay) original axiom!
Design instruction that compels students to be taut while being taught.
What would your lessons look like if they maximized student passion? suspense? excitement? If your lessons welcomed students’ emotions about the subject matter, including hatred, contempt, resistance? If you entered every classroom utterly psyched to be there with your lesson plan and the students, certain that something interesting (even if unexpected) would happen as the lines in your Teaching Triangle began to hum?
If you already teach this way, how do you do it? Please share! I’m sure there are some teachers out there who are dragging right about now and students who are slumping and slack.
My wish for you and your students: Get tau[gh]t!