What teachers make
Someday I'm going to be able to speak truth like that.
Someday I'm going to be able to speak truth like that.
Ideally, teachers would focus on one single thing: getting their students really, deeply excited about the subject of the course. Everything else, the students can do on their own.
Peter Turney, Apperceptual: Genius, Sustained Effort, and Passion (blog post)
Link from Michael Nielsen
Here's another of my favorite quotes:
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
=)
J- was getting frustrated by the game of chess she was playing with her dad. She couldn't see any good moves. Her pieces were all tangled up, and she didn't know what to do.
It's interesting watching another human being learn how to think strategically. She's not quite there yet, as she has a hard time thinking of what her dad's response would be. I remember being like that, and I remember the chess drills I did in order to learn how to see ahead.
So instead of writing the blog post that I meant to write today, I took some time to teach her. No, I didn't coach her during the game. Instead, we wiped the board clean and I set out some pieces for one of the simplest drills, King and Rook vs King. I'd shown her this before. She'd successfully completed it with some coaching. It would be good for reinforcing the idea of thinking ahead.
She was moving the pieces somewhat randomly (although legally, of course). So I started counting to 50 moves, the limit on end-game dilly-dallying in tournament play. When I was getting close to 50, she We reached a draw during the first drill. Then I showed her how she needed to decide which side of the board she would force my king to stay on, and how that rook could keep my king there, then drive it backwards once it had the support of her king.
We did another drill, with plenty of sound effects. "I'm going to get you!" I exclaimed as my solitary king pursued her rook, step by step. She squealed and moved her rook to the other side. "Uh oh," I said when my king had nowhere to go but in front of hers. "Noooo!", I cried as her rook forced mine against the board. She checkmated my king with a little prompting.
We went back and forth a few times before she caught on that she needed to sometimes "waste" a move. When she could checkmate my king with no prompting, I reinforced the idea ("Pick which side of the board you're going to squish my king against, and focus on forcing my king back") and replaced her rook with a queen. I showed her how a queen can checkmate faster than a rook. She checkmated me handily, and finished the session thrilled with what she could do.
Why am I telling this story? I think it hints at why and how I teach. A lot of what I'm doing right now can be considered teaching, even though it looks different: my social media consulting with IBM, the book that I'm writing on Emacs... But I'm not teaching facts or procedures. I care about shaping attitude and so that I can unlock potential. I talk to people about blogging and bookmarking because I want to influence their attitude towards collaboration, and because I want to see what they'll do (so that I can learn from them too!). I talk about Emacs, but what's important to me is the "if I can tweak this, what else can I do with it?" kind of feeling that will unlock the rest of Emacs for other people.
So part of what I do is think of exercises or examples that will help people feel that intrinsic joy. For J and chess today, it was the feeling of purposeful movement and of knowing what she was doing. That's what I hoped to teach her. How can I do this better?
On Technorati: teachingYesterday I re-learned that I can teach even when everything's going blah.
I'd been running on far too little sleep for the past few days - some five hours a day, I think. Nonetheless I managed to drag myself out of bed by 6:30, catching a few blinks on the commute and making it into IBM by 8:00. I just wanted to go back to sleep, but I was stressing out about the activity - and the fact that by 9:30, I needed to be vibrantly alive and enthusiastic.
Sometimes it's just not one of those days.
A spot of hot chocolate would've done me well, I think. However, there was not a single sachet of hot chocolate mix anywhere in the coffee area for my lab, not even in my apparently-no-longer-secret stash behind the tea boxes in the cabinet. No Hershey's Kisses in Stephen Perelgut's cubicle, either. In my distraction I'd forgotten about the Tim Horton's cafe at the end of the building. Instead, I went back to my computer and went through a few blogs in order to learn new things and thus stimulate my mind.
The class went okay, although it was unexceptional. The words felt thick and unwieldy in my mouth, unclearly explained. However, the kids did what they needed to, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how much they recalled from the activity two days ago.
As for me - I learned, yet again, that I need to take better care of myself in order to be at top form. =) I hate being blah. I hate fuzzy days. I'd rather wake up with a smile on my face and plenty of energy...
Note to self: don't volunteer for anything in the morning!
On Technorati: teaching
Random Japanese sentence: テーブルã«猫ã®足跡ãÂŒ付ã„ã¦ã„る。 There are footprints of a cat on the table.
Every year, IBM holds a week-long camp for 7th and 8th grade girls, encouraging them to go into science and technology. Yesterday, I was the instructor for the module "Women in Science". That was tough!
I was terrified. I didn't feel prepared at all, having forgotten to put together colored slips of paper for the kids to write on. Well, I'd remembered the need for it, but not the actual colors. Not only was I worrying about how to do that, but the other volunteer briefed me on how challenging this group was and how little their tolerance for boredom could be.
In those frantic few minutes before the kids came through the door, I pulled myself together and came up with Plan B. Jennifer Schachter was awesome. She kept me focused by reminding me of the things we'd thought of doing, and that helped everything click into place. By the time the kids came in, I felt confident enough to fake the rest.
One of the things you learn as a teacher, after all, is to pretend that Plan B was the real plan all along. ;)
After a brief introduction, I gave the kids two minutes to read and write all they could about Hedy Lamarr. Then we went around the groups, each group naming a single fact about Hedy Lamarr. If they were the only group to write down that fact, they got five points. If they shared it with another group, each group earned three points. If more than two groups had that fact, each group earned one point. I also got them to look for information on Birute Galdikas and Ada Lovelace.
After the event, the other facilitators said they were surprised to find the kids so quiet and so engaged in a task. Whew!
I think one of the reasons why it worked was that the activity was structured so that everyone could be a hero, but no one could lose. That is, what the kids learned and wrote down could directly contribute to the team getting a point, but if the team got no points, it wasn't the fault of anyone in particular.
Anyway, that was tons of fun. Scary, but fun. =)
On Technorati: teaching
Random Japanese sentence: ãƒÂÂコã§も王様を見られる。 Even a cat may look at a king.[Prov]
