With Thanks To …

My thanks go to Mark Weston (web site: http://www.linkedin.com/in/westonmark, twitter @ShiftParadigm) for prompting this post.

His original tweet was “RT@djmath Teaching is not rocket science. It is…far more complex, demanding work than rocket sci. Richard Elmore, Harvard via @kdwashburn“, and it made me ponder my own practice as a teacher. He then went on to observe “@philhart Ha! Perhaps simple, elegant rules and actions reflecting deep understanding…“. Yikes, thinks I: “Am I that transparent?”.

My Own Approach

Goals

For me, my job is to escort each learner to whatever is their learning goal.

Educational System

Learning goals can be made explicit, as in for example Units of Competency under the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF). For me, the contextualisation of such documents into the learner’s own reality is simple, and at times feels to be merely clerical.

Delivery

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step” (Chinese proverb). Equally, eating an elephant is best done with small mouthfuls. I carve up the contents of the learning into sizes to suit my learners’ mouths.

Assessment

This is easier in some subjects than others, e.g Maths compared with English, but it still comes down to comparing student product with the learning outcomes specified in the relevant document. If no such document exists, then I am free to write my own.

Classroom Dynamic

The classroom dynamic is just about people sharing a common purpose. I try to make it enjoyable (I find that it aids the learning process), and for the life of me I cannot see why we should not all be enjoying ourselves in the process.

Mixing These Ingredients Together

It is the classroom dynamic, judging how everybody feels at the moment, that sets the agenda on a second-by-second basis.