It's really amazing how critical making mistakes is to learning - so much so that it must be an integral aspect of teaching, but it is such a fine art that it seems to be the hardest part of teaching. How do you encourage mistakes in your students without making the material too difficult and alientating them? Likewise, where is the line on making things too easy? And then, once mistakes are made, how do you go about helping the students resolve them? What methods are most effective for internalizing mistakes without simply memorizing the correct answer?
I think I've already discovered that simply correcting doesn't work. I actually knew that pretty early on in high school when I started tutoring others. But how do you explain a concept to a mind that is not trained to see concepts, but only facts? I think, as I've already discovered, that this is my biggest challenge. I really don't know how to motivate a student to try hard enough to internalize a single concept, because I'm not familiar enough with how the Mozambican mind works. So I spend 45 minutes hammering out one concept to 25% of the students reasonably well. Incredibly, this is more than they internalize in any other subject, as far as I can tell. But they are often successful in doing what other teachers ask for, whereas they routinely fail what I ask for.
As far as English teaching goes, I'm intrigued by this different mode and style of teaching. These are students who have naturally honed language learning skills, but the classroom techniques seem to rarely match up with how they REALLY learn language. I'm just starting to discover how I can match these two areas up.
It seems like the two opposing teaching methodologies can be put on a spectrum. On one side is pure mimetics where the teacher is knower of all and the students' responsibilities are to replicate as exactly as possible the teacher, in language, mannerisms, and techniques. The teacher in this philosophy is infallible and the ultimate goal of the learner. A perfect score on the part of the learner means that the learner has achieved the knowledge of the teacher, which is never possible.
On the other side of the spectrum is pure facilitation, where the teacher is not required to know anything about the discipline taught, but rather be a master of organizing and manipulating the students to discover the information. The teacher is completely fallible and is learning along with the students. Questions are redirected to the students in different ways in order to promote independent learning. A total community-learning atmosphere is promoted and the overall goal is very vague, unlike the mimetics where there are precise goals and measurable progress. The teacher as facilitator approach does not see testing as a good way to evaluate learning.
OK, so I just used the passive voice and far too much pompous language. Plus, I stole ideas from other people who I refuse to credit, but you get my point. I'm simply saying that there seems to be two extremes of teaching and classroom styles and 99% of teachers fall somewhere in the middle. And this doesn't even account for the fact vs theory-based approach. Do you memorize a multiplication table or learn WHY 6 times 5 is 30? So Dover is the capital of Delaware, but what were the historical events that led to this? The fact-based approach is results-based and is more appropriate for certain disciplines and parts of disciplines. For instance, language vocabulary. Unless you really want to derive the origins of every single word, you're going to just have to memorize words. But once you learn how verbs work in a language, you don't have to memorize every single conjugation of every single verb.
So it seems there are four points to a teaching philosophy all told, forming a cross where in the middle is found a teacher who asks the students to discover how best to imitate the teacher's knowledge, which is theory-backed but generously sprinkled with facts.
Is this where I'm headed? Or do I really want to try heading into the undocumented world of teacher-as-facilitator? I'm pushing myself towards it, but is it getting me anywhere? I noticed today that my students were frustrated that I wasn't simply correcting their errors, but I know that if I did, they would simply memorize what I called "right". Not even giving them the opportunity means that they'll have to necessarily discriminate. But does that mean I'm a bad teacher because I don't correct my students' errors?
I bought a pumpkin today for about 40 cents and it is quite heavy. I thought my jaw was going to hit the ground when the vendor said the price. Baked pumpkin seeds this week!
Peace
John
