Teacherscribe's Teaching Thought #18

Teaching Thought #18

In prepping for my UND Teaching and Learning 250 class a few years ago, I came across this interesting read, Ten Things Teachers Should Unlearn – I revisit it before every school year.

Third thing teachers should unlearn:  Teachers are responsible for the learning

As a teacher, I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I side with Alfie Kohn when he presents this old philosophical chest-nut “If a lesson is taught and students don’t learn anything, was the lesson even ‘taught’”?  And the answer is, of course, no.  It wasn’t taught.  Regardless of the class, whether it’s my College Comp 2 students, many of whom will graduate with 4.0 or higher GPAs, or if it’s my classes at the ALC, if I ‘teach’ a lesson, the students better take something away from it.  If they don’t take anything away, I need to re-teach it. I failed.

But, at the same time, I’ve had plenty of instances where I’ve taught my rear end off and a student selected to purposely tune out.

When that happens, I have to refer to one of my heroes, Seth Godin, and his advice: “this isn’t for you.”

I had a student last year who was constantly on her phone.  She thought she was smarter than everyone else in the class, including me.  For most of the first semester, I warned her to get off her phone and pay attention.  Her work reflected this attitude.  

I realized that I could teach my rear-end off and she would just be on Snapchat.  So I cut her loose.  This class wasn’t for her.  I am able to live with that.

Why?

Because 90% of the students in the class learned a lot and grew as writers and thinkers.  

She purposely chose to not join in and grow.  There was no more I could do.  I can live with that.