Guru's Handbook

What Teachers Make

Poetry is at times the best bridge between reason and understanding. Here is a piece about teaching which I found worth the three mintues to watch. Teacher-poet Taylor Mali is asked, at a dinner party, “You’re a teacher, Taylor. Be honest: what do you make?”

Here is his answer: What Teachers Make

Teaching for Money

Because deep teaching must transcend or encompass powerful symbols such as money, excellence in teaching requires we understand how such compensation affects our work.

Money is a strong motive force. If your students pay you to teach, money necessarily becomes part of what you teach them, whether you intend it to or not. By the very act of accepting payment you show and thus teach that your teaching may be bought. When students believe their ability to pay is why you teach them, it affects how and what they learn.

Being paid to teach also affect us as teachers. We may wonder at our value when it is represented by money. We may be affected by the control of those who pay us.

If the money takes steps around you, as it does for most public school teachers, traveling from citizen to government and then back to the school and to the teacher, the influence that your monetary compensation has on your students is blunted because they are less aware of the flow of these funds. If parents instead gave their children cash to give you directly, what those students learn and how they understand your teaching would change markedly, as would your own understanding.

For the student who pays you directly, it is important to take into account that influence while at the same time separating the teaching from that influence – not an easy task. Additionally, it is important to separate out the teacher’s need for compensation from the student’s need to compensate. We may not need the money, but the student may need to pay in order to learn. Or the other way around.

Further, what money means to one student is different from what it means to the next. A rich student and a poor student will not have the same experience in learning in the same environment, even while paying the same amount. While each teacher-student relationship is unique, students in a classroom expect to be treated similarly. A difference in base wealth creates a difference in the learning experience even though on the surface it may appear equitable.

Thus we must look for and understand the currencies in play. Money and its absence are both motive forces. A student who believes they pay a lot to be taught may feel they need not give much else, such as respect or effort. A student who pays no money may feel they are incurring an obligation and attempt to compensate in other ways. Such reactions may interfere with the teaching, or they may help it, and we must seek to understand the student and their motivations so that we can best serve their learning.

If you have paying students, you have two issues to consider: for yourself, how money affects your teaching and how to allow for that influence. For the student, how to separate out the money from the learning, or how to include it in your teaching, or both.

My offered practice: If you are paid to teach, consider how your teaching would change – or stop altogether – if there were no money at all. Or less money. Or more. Consider how your teaching would change if students paid you directly, or in differing amounts. Follow the trail of influence that money plays in your teaching. Consider how your deepest and most important teachings are affected.

Listening Past the Voices

We all carry voices in our heads. They are the voices of our teachers, parents, friends. They comment on our work, our accomplishments, our failures. Sometimes they cause us to wonder if we have missed something, to wonder if they would approve.

Over time, these voices – these imagined voices – become so familiar that we are no longer entirely conscious of them even while we act and react with them in mind. In this cacophony of judgment and praise our own capacity to see clearly and think for ourselves can be drowned out.

Our students have such voices as well, and over time our own voice may join them. We must be on the lookout for this because as flattering as it is to have a student follow our mental footsteps and wonder how we would view their actions, it is our task to teach our students to see the world around them and think for themselves.

There are many ways to address such thought patterns in a student, some of them overt, such as discussing how we model the people who influence us, and some subtle, such as exaggerating a voice for dramatic effect and seeing if the student recognizes the echo in their own mind.

Most teaching is about strengthening the student’s understanding of our views, but there are times when it is best to seek to weaken the shadow of our voice in the student’s mind. This is not because our words are not worth hearing and remembering, but because we have a duty to teach our students to listen beyond imagined voices of opinion and judgment, to see past the pitfalls and blindnesses of their friends, parents, and teachers.

My offered practice: look for a time and place in which you sense a reflection of someone else’s voice in your student’s thoughts, perhaps even your own. Can you highlight these imagined judgments or praises in a way that helps the student see through them?

Fourteen Articles on Teaching

I have been asked for an introduction to my work. The following is a collection of fourteen articles that I offer as an overview of the first two years of these writings. I have excerpted a bit from each article along with the link.

What is a Teacher?

“Teacher” is a lable. Sometimes it carries too much weight to be useful, and sometimes not enough. Sometimes a student crosses your path for only a moment, not long enough to make introductions, let alone to label the exchange, but long enough to offer something of value. Long enough to teach.

Exercises in Listening

Learning to listen well is perhaps the single most important thing that a teacher of depth can do….Here are some exercises that I practice:

Deliberate Mistakes

There is a myth, a script, that says the teacher does not, should not, make mistakes. It goes on to say that teacher mistakes should only seem to be mistakes to the student who does not yet understand the teacher’s true intent. Indeed, a clever teacher can arrange for the student to conclude this about nearly any misstep… Choosing to reveal your mistakes to the student changes this script.

Teaching Without Authority

Teaching without assumption of authority is a sort of stealth teaching. For those accustomed to being known as the teacher, this approach can be mysterious; how do you teach someone who does not consider themselves a student? Such skills can augment formal teaching and can extend a teacher’s range, but these skills can be hard to come by, especially if you are used to relying on your position to command attention.

This sort of subtle teaching is powerful because it comes in under the radar of defensiveness and fear. No one is being told they do not know enough, or that they should try harder. The “teacher” is simply solving problems as an equal. And learning happens.

Details

It is a teacher trap to think you can give all the information you need to give to a student, in any moment. No matter what the level of the student, it is not helpful to tell them everything they could be doing better. It’s too much.

Teaching Without Action

Another way to look at teaching is that our purpose is the student’s learning, and our actions should be in support of that purpose. So if the student is learning without us doing anything, we should stand back, do less, let them learn.

Finding the Teacher’s Clear Signal

A student can more accurately sense your disconnection from your own
integrity, from your own clarity, than they can your disconnection from any facts.

Seeking Truth with Curiosity and Wonder

As teachers we get mixed messages about curiosity. We are told to encourage wonder in our students but to stay on topic. We are told to stoke a desire to explore but not to upset the parents.

A delight in uncovering, unwrapping, and discovery produces agile, self-propelled students. How do we open the door to wonder and curiosity as an approach, and yet honor the limits of the world in which we teach?

Responding to Challenge

When possible, keep the conflict within the scope of your teaching. That is, include this issue, this challenge, this drama, whatever it is, in the study. Take the attitude that this conflict is not external to the study, and you will keep it in view rather than push it into hiding. The teacher who does not allow challenge to their teaching is missing a great range possibility for deep teaching.

Why Do You Teach?

What is the darkest, least flattering motivation you have for teaching? This is what constrains your deepest and most profound teaching ability. Left unseen and unknown, this is a blind spot you will teach around and a trap that will catch and prevent your best work.

Why Teach When There Are Books?

Words do not carry meaning, though they can, perhaps, point to meaning. This is part of the teacher’s job: to point to meaning. This requires us to have some sense of where to point to, and where to point from — the student.

Addressing Ego: When the Student Passes You

Look into the dark corners. In the privacy of your own mind and heart seek the extremes of possibilities: your talented student fails — are you relieved? The student succeeds brilliantly — have you any envy? The student comes to you asking advice. Are you reassured? “I need you,” the student says. What do you feel?

This can be a tangled set of motivations, even for the most self-aware of teachers. On the other side of this tangle, of course, waits our greatest prize: a student who goes farther than we thought our teaching could lead, who validates our deepest work as teachers. It is a tangle worth walking through.

Excavating Fear

As teachers we must be aware that our protected fears detract from our teaching ability. To avoid our fears we must look away from them, and we must keep looking away from them. Over time this focus on not seeing becomes an ingrained habit upon which we layer compelling explanations for why we do not dig in that spot. We cannot see this area, cannot use what is there, cannot go beyond. We limit our ability to teach anything that touches this.

On Being Done

It is easy to underestimate the power of a teacher’s advocacy to move forward, to clear a space for something new, especially when you are that teacher. A teacher’s help in making this transition can allow the student to focus on something new with confidence. A teacher’s approval for moving on, for being done, can be a great and freeing gift.

Giving Thanks

At this time of year I like to reflect on those people in my life who have given me the gift of their companionship, their insights, their spirit. Some of these are my teachers, some are my students, some are neither.

If you are part of a spiritual discipline that values thankfullness as a practice and attitude, consider that such appreciation of others is something that can be observed and emulated. As a teacher, can you show your students what gratitude might look like?

Be aware of the difference between lecturing about gratitude and practicing it. Too often we direct others in actions and attitudes we ourselves do not evince, without even the useful teaching of giving voice to our own struggles.

My offered practice: when teaching, make or find a time to enjoy the company of your students, or to talk about a subject you have affection for. Can you find some satisfaction in this time, in your students, in your subject? If you can find an ember of delight in this moment, breathe on it and seek to turn it into warmth. If you find that you appreciate the company or effort of your students, tell them this. Consider how you might also tell them without words.

Thank you, my readers, for your presence here.

Teaching and Masks

In the course of teaching, especially deep teaching, teachers take on different aspects in order to reach their student. Sometimes this is as simple as presenting a confidence we do not feel, sometimes it is a more involved face or drama created for the student’s benefit. Any time we teach, we choose what facets of ourselves to show our student in order to best teach them. Our job, after all, is to help the student understand the material, perhaps the world, not to understand us.

In order to evoke class discussion and decrease drop-out rates, these teachers posed as students, using on-line personas with invented names, photos and profiles. When the teachers revealed these actions, some students and faculty reacted with outrage, feelings of betrayal, and questions about the teachers’ ethics.

Most of us were raised in a time when teachers could not easily pass as students. On-line this is no longer the case. We may find it unsettling, but our discomfort alone does not make it unethical. We must look beneath the surface of our assumptions, to the core of what we understand, to our touchstone: what is in the student’s best interest?

The instructor in this case benefited the student in at least two ways: first, increasing student involvement, as intended, by demonstrating how an involved student might act. And second, by reminding students that on-line all we know is what we are shown, all we have is masks. Even when photos and bios are a good semblance, they tell us little about the person behind them. These are both useful teachings.

As the world around us alters, we must be careful to distinguish between what is new to us and what is at odds with our best principles. Being surprised at how a teacher teaches does not mean we need also be outraged. The on-line world is a tool, and how we use it to teach is what is important.

For those on the path of excellence in teaching, it is to our advantage to understand how we use presentation in our teaching and why.

My offered practice: in the course of teaching, notice yourself presenting a facet of yourself, a persona, a mask. What is the benefit to the student of this particular presentation? In another moment consider the question again.

Teaching Listening

Enter a classroom of loud student voices and you are likely to find a teacher demanding silence. The method can vary; I have seen teachers write on boards, yell, drop books, pound desks, or stand quietly until the class follows.

However it is achieved, student silence is not student attention. If as a teacher you insist on student silence – and you would be in the minority if you did not – and you get it, take some moments to examine what you actually have. Student silence is usually passive compliance and nothing like engaged listening or captured attention.

Attention itself is a shifting quality, like water, and even the most focused of us drift. We can hardly expect our students to attend to our every word, nor to attend perfectly. So what can we expect? Very little. We can only expect what we teach and inspire.

In Ten Mistakes Teachers Make I write: “…teaching your students to listen deeply is one of your most important lessons, and there is no better way than to show them.”

If you want your students to be genuinely and deeply attentive you must show them how. Demonstrating listening means someone other than you is talking. What should they talk about? Just as having a response in mind changes the quality and effectiveness of your listening, telling someone what to say and then remaining quiet is not particularly good listening.

My offered practice: devote five minutes of your teaching session to listening to your students talk about the subject in as open a format as you can arrange. Practice listening to them as you would want them to listen to you.

Teach your students to speak. Show them how to listen. Demonstrate this often and well, and they will come to understand, from both sides, what listening can accomplish.

The Mismatch Between what Science Knows and what Business Does

I rarely recommend video lectures because I prefer to read than to watch most presenters, but I found this TED lecture by Daniel Pink to be well worth my time. While he is addressing his points to business, they are also relevant to education.

He says: “There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.” Research shows that if a problem may be solved mechanically, by following instructions, rewards motivate workers to better performance, but when a problem requires creativity, rewards instead degrade performance.

To apply this to education, if we believe that students learn mechanically and by following instructions, then rewards may motivate them. If not, if we believe that that learning is a creative act, then we must take serious note of this research and change our pedagogical processes accordingly.

A Third Anniversary

Today marks the third anniversary of my initial post. In previous years, I have used this date to note popular articles, discuss my own favorites, and to generally reflect. I usually say enough and more, so this year I instead decided to ask a regular reader and teacher if she might want to comment. She did. I am touched and humbled by her reply, which I include here in its entirety.

For three years I have been reading and learning from the Guru’s Handbook. At the beginning I was captivated by the succinct wisdom expressed in the bite-sized posts. As time passed, the subject matter deepened and the posts lengthened, but remained thought-provoking as ever.

As one who still considers herself more student than teacher, I sometimes felt like I was peeking in on territory which was not really mine to explore. And yet, there was a way in which, from the very start, the author made it clear that teaching is not so easy to pin down into definable classrooms.

There are too many things to list that I have gleaned from the last three years of blog posts and interactions with the author, but I feel compelled to speak of a few.

First of all, Asher Bey has created a space that feels very safe to explore the parameters of deep teaching, in a way that opens doors, rather than keeps people out. In large part I credit this to the fearless way in which the author shed ego power trips to reveal the sometimes painful lessons learned through mistakes. A student’s trust is built upon a teacher’s willingness to be vulnerable. When teachers dare to share this, it is a huge gift.

Secondly, I would say there is a high degree of integrity in the Guru’s Handbook, based on Asher’s ongoing encouragement to bring the responsibility back to us as teachers. Another of my teachers likes to say “If you learn anything here, it’s your own fault”, which is one way of empowering his students to own their lessons. Another face of that coin, and one which is articulated over and over in the Guru’s Handbook, is that we must continue to take responsibility for the student’s learning, by ongoing vigilance in noticing our own flaws and biases, and strive to not let them harm the learning process.

Thirdly, the inclusion of “offered practices” is a lovely invitation to test the theory being espoused. Finding a way to make ideas real is a challenge for teachers of many disciplines. Change happens in small steps over time, for teachers as well as students. These exercises are opportunities to try small changes in our teaching practices.

For these and numerous other reasons my thanks and congratulations to the Guru’s Handbook for three years of quality blogging. It’s much appreciated.

I am grateful to you, my readers, for your presence in my life and work.

Teaching is Looking

At this very moment we are missing something. It is inevitable that we miss something, because there are too many things in the world at too many levels for us to be able to see them all. So we will miss things, possibly even very important things.

For those of us who pride ourselves on our ability to see, this can be a difficult truth to accept. Surely if we look harder or farther or deeper – perhaps faster – we will see everything we need to see. A moment’s consideration suggests this is unlikely. There are simply too many things happening around us, to us, and inside us, at varying levels of specificity and detail, for us to take them all in. Indeed, the harder we look, the more intensely we focus, the more likely we are to miss something else.

Where does this realization lead us? If we cannot help but miss things in every moment, then as we teach, we also miss things. What important cues are we not seeing? What is there about the student, the subject, the school, that we might be missing that we and the student would benefit from us seeing?

Part of teaching is learning to look, not always with a narrow focus that reveals details, nor with a many-shot focus that attempts to take in everything, but also with a wider, softer focus that lets us see the shape of things rather than the details. What does our peripheral vision reveal?

Because our expectations drive what we can see and where we look to see it, we may also need to soften our expectations, perhaps let them also become a little fuzzy around the edges as we seek to improve our vision.

My offered practice: take a moment in teaching to notice what you see. For the sake of the exercise, accept the possibility that at least one of your students is giving you an important visual cue that you are missing. Consider the possibility that the classroom also holds some important information that you are overlooking. Try looking at your students, space, and subject matter in a less focused way. What do you see?