The more important what you are teaching, the more important it is to evoke the student as a motive force. If you believe you must push the student constantly to get them to learn, what happens when you stop pushing?
Deep and transformative results need the lightest possible touch. The student must be the one to act. Yes, there is a time and place for the small push that helps the student feel motion, such as when teaching someone to ride a bike, but use the minimimum possible. Then back off to let the student push themselves. Use your skills to entice the student’s movement forward, to open the way for the student to step through.
As teaching tools, threats, rebukes, and put-downs are weak. They may achieve intimidation, compliance, and obedience, but will not create a student who is as strong and capable as the teacher. At best, relentless pressure produces dependency; the student learns and performs only when the teacher pushes. This does not make the student the agent of their own work and learning.
For we who want the greatest prize, the student who goes beyond us, who takes on our teachings, who passes on our messages, we must inspire them to move on their own from the very start. We ourselves must do the hard work of standing aside so they can.
That is the job of the teacher of depth. Open the way, offer perspectives, preview what is possible. Then let the student act.
Say less, push less, answer less. A light touch.
I agree completely. I see this same principle in my counseling work. The process does not work until I have trust that clients can change for their benefit. I work towards helping clients discover their abilities to move forward, and then try to get out of the way.
I remember going to a teacher with help on a paper in graduate school (I really wanted answers on how to write it). Instead of taking over the paper and telling me what to do, he said to me, “You are good writer, and as a graduate student, you need to write as an expert, rather than a research reporter, like you did as an undergraduate.” He has no idea the impact this made on me and my writing. By not taking over and not pushing too hard, I took amazing steps in my graduate education.
Thank you Asher for the post. I find it very relevant. For me, the point I have to pay attention to is not so much rebuesw but being over protective.
In this context what do you have to say about students who lack the motivation or the skills for being independent?
Or do you believe that there are no such students?
Aviv
Asher, you are so right. I recently (again) wrote on the same topic using the example of a mother bird who raises up her chicks and then gently but firmly nudges them out of the nest to ultimate success or failure. Once again, less is more when working with students. However, I believe that level is important to consider. I am far more involved with the everyday activities of my beginning students and far less involved with the work of my advanced students. At first I corral, later I gently correct. Another outstanding post my friend.
Ben, thank you for your comment. As teachers, getting out of the way is not only hard work, but is often invisible to our (actual and imagined) observers, so that we who have any ego at all find it a challenge.
Your experience with your teacher is a fine example. This is the teacher whose faith in our abilities helps create those same abilities, who with a gentle touch helps us learn to be our own motive force. Thank you for relating this experience.
When I teach I am at times unsure how light a touch to apply. I try to err on the side of too light rather than too heavy, in the hope that if my student needs more, they will ask. Yet sometimes I still say and do too much. Do you find this to be true in your counselling work? I am interested in what indicators you look for to see if your touch is too heavy or too light.
Aviv, thank you for your thought-provoking comments.
On protection: Our desire to protect is a powerful force, coming as it does from our identification with the student and their vulnerability. The problem is not that we should not protect, but that our motivation toward protecting can be more about us than the student. We must be aware of this if we are to see to the student’s best learning interest. If I want to protect my student, I find I am best off taking a moment to first conduct a personal inquiry to find out who and what I am trying to protect and to what end. Building a strong student who leaves our teaching requires that we allow them to experience some of the same sorts of challenges from which we developed our own ability to protect. This is a great surrender on our part, isn’t it?
On motivation: I will go as far as to assert that every student has motivation, but motivation toward what I cannot always say. And does that motivation take them forward on the path of the study? I will not assert that inside every resistant and dependent student is a motivated and passionate one struggling to be present in the world; there may instead be a psychopath who we are unable to teach or motivate no matter what we do. Of course, there are many students who are not mentally ill who we also cannot teach for various reasons.
Some of what I have to say about motivating students I said in this post, where I emphasize teaching choice to teach motivation and finding out what the student cares about in order to teach the subject in a relevant way.
CalT,
Thought-provoking point about new students. Thank you. It all depends on what we are teaching, of course. Even with the new student, I believe it is an interesting exercise to put forth as little as possible, to draw as much out of the students as possible, to take what is already there and match it to the fundamentals of what we are teaching. It forces the teacher to be relevant to the student and little creates a strong and motivated student faster. No matter how new, it is a rare subject that has nothing to do with the rest of the students’ lives. What do you think?
Asher, I am attempting to answer your questions to my comment:
As a counselor, I often find myself searching for the balance between a too heavy or too light push. There are times to teach and advise, and there are times to question and listen. As far as indicators go, I ask myself this question: Am I working harder than my client? If yes, then I am getting in the way of growth–I am trying to become the motive force for someone else. If no, then I am in a good position, as long as I am staying involved in the process with the client.
Unfortunately, it is harder to do than it is to write in this comments section. I often want somebody to “get it” faster than they do, when all my experience says it is more important they come to their own conclusion. I want to push heavily when someone is close to where I want them to be, even though they need to keep the same pace. Other times I may find myself limiting what I think a person can do and pushing too lightly. Other times, it all comes into balance and the right amount of push happens at the right time, and then real change happens–and at that moment, I am reminded why I chose this profession.
Ben:
Elegantly and succinctly put, this guideline to ask yourself if you are working harder than your client. Thank you.
I hesitate at drawing a division between teaching/advising and listening/questioning, because I see listening and questioning as the essence of teaching, as the base atop which lecture and answer can be useful, but far more sparingly.
I am intrigued by taking your description of what you do and applying it as a focused teaching practice: can we take some portion of time, some lesson, and allow – or guide – the student to work harder than we do? And what does that mean, to “work harder”?
In Silence as Advocacy I talk about how the teacher can teach by saying nothing at all. I add that this is hard work. Saying less, doing less, and fiddling less with the student can be some of the hardest work a teacher does. In moments when we notice the student going in the right direction and we ourselves choose to act less, we may seem to be doing very little when in truth we are working very hard, perhaps even harder than the student. At least in that particular way, in the way of refraining from acting. Perhaps the practice here then is about action, about motion. Again, motivation – letting the student (or the client) be the one who is moving, and direct our efforts toward that end, which may mean not acting, but may be hard work.
I am fascinated by the similarities and differences between teaching and counseling, and I hope you will say more about this subject, about the balance of pushing and refraining, perhaps on your own blog (where I could link to it) or here if you are willing. I am grateful for your perspective.
The desire to push harder, to see more progress in the target of our work – the student or client – is one of the passions and desires that I advocate teachers understand in themselves if their first desire is excellence in their work.
Asher,
I would also hesitate making a division between teaching/advising and listening/questioning. As a counselor, I have to use a combination of all four of those tasks depending in the situation. However, I find in counseling, questioning and listening to be the essence of counseling. Those in it for entertainment on TV tend to question, pretend to listen, and then answer their own question. Humiliation is the result for the “client.” Questioning and listening without an answer in mind is, I believe, some on the hardest work for a counselor and as a person. The best work I’ve found on this is “The Lost Art of Listening” by Michael Nichols.
“Work harder”– I would define it as giving into the impulse or desire to take responsibility for someone else. So, working harder in this sense is not measured by intensity or energy. I agree with you, the hard work is to work less, to let the things in motion stay in motion without our interference. Is not the goal in teaching and counseling to put someone else in motion to move beyond us? We “work hard” when we take on the responsibility for someone else. For instance, doing my homework in middle school was harder work for my mother because she often took the responsibility for it.
Pushing and refraining is an interesting topic to me. Ironically, when you are refraining, you are pushing in another direction. You are pushing for someone to push themselves by not pushing. I could imagine a teacher needing to push/refrain different for each student, just as different family members need different push/refrain levels in counseling.
I did not articulate this as well as I would have liked. I find myself constantly on a journey with these ideas. I am attempting to interact with myself in a way that I don’t impede my own journey, and continue to move towards growth. I find that practicing what I preach is not just a good idea, it is an essential part of moving forward.
Thank you for these thoughtful comments. You say that questioning and listening are the essence of counseling. I see teaching similarly. Not only because listening and questioning are good teaching (and counseling) approaches, but also because they are good modeling for the student (or client). That is, we are showing them how. Thus the quality of our listening and questioning is important on multiple levels.
Most students have learned (as perhaps have your clients) to wait for the “experts” to tell them the answers. They have rarely been taught to ask questions, but rather to note the answers we give them, and offer those back later. I can well imagine you have clients whose want you to tell them the answers because that is how we are often taught. A child who pushes back with questions typically finds the limits of a teacher’s willingness to tolerate issues not on the lesson plan.
As a teacher (and counselor) asking questions and listening is not just a good technique, it is also teaching the student (or client) to ask questions and listen. It is demonstrating to them how, what that might look like.
I agree that students benefit differently from pushing, and different types of pushing, as do your clients. When a teacher treats any student differently from any other there is another layer of teaching to that difference. That is, the students notice. If you push family members differently, do you explain to other members why, or let them draw their own conclusions? In a classroom this issue arises along with questions of fairness. As a counselor, everything you do with one family member in front of another is also modeling, teaching. I’m sure you strive for fairness; most counselors and teachers do, so when you find yourself pushing one person harder than another, how do you handle the larger scope implications that the observing family members might draw?
Thank you for engaging in this fascinating subject.