The first truly confronting thought I’ve had in my learning journey has been transforming from a facilitator of adult learning to a facilitator of adolescent learning.
The greatest cause of discomfort was the thought of not being able to get the kids ‘on my side’, so to speak. To make them want to learn from me.
From my experiences, moving to different classrooms and observing many teachers, the idea of getting the kids ‘on side’ has been rather influential. You have to get adolescents to buy into your class, to want to be in your classroom and to want to engage in your lesson. It seems that the disengaged classes are those where the kids didn’t buy into the lesson.
Just like in retail – you’ve got to sell your product to them. You have to earn their trust, their respect, and, most of all, inspire them. Didn’t we all as kids ourselves look for sources of inspiration? So for me, it’s wanting to develop my classes from being insipid to inspiring.
Working with my mentor has been fantastic in shaping that. I’m teaching a KLA that I myself was really disengaged with when I was at school, so now being put into a position where I have to teach that which I rather despised has been eye-opening. I always have to consider the question:
Is it insipid or inspiring?
They say life begins when you leave your comfort zone. I am most definitely outside of mine.