Teaching Traps
Once upon a time, in a long-lost professional life, I worked as a licensed speech therapist in public schools. One thing to know abut speech therapists, in addition to the fact that they tend to be alarmingly competent (I am absurdly organized for a musician but only mid-level organized for a speech therapist) is that they work across many classrooms, serving students and collaborating with teachers across and even between school buildings.
This means that, as a speech therapist, I got to glimpse the inner workings of literally hundreds of classrooms.
This was an incredible gift.
I saw that the quality of teaching varied dramatically from classroom to classroom. And I saw just how much that variation impacted student behavior and achievement. I am the teacher I am today– and the learner I am today– because I got to see first hand what worked –and what emphatically did not.
Interestingly, successful teaching seemed to come in many flavors. Mrs. A was kind and quiet, gently guiding her students. Mrs. C was loud and silly; her classroom was freewheeling and a little wild, but the kids were engaged and enthusiastic. Mrs. T was extremely strict while conveying a deep respect for her learners. Yet all of them nurtured classrooms in which children learned and thrived.
The least successful teachers, on the other hand, seemed eerily similar, like a chain of miserable paper dolls. Again and again, they fell into the same mental traps, exhibited the same repertoire of futile behaviors. And their chaotic, ineffective classrooms could have been clones.
If you’re not a teacher, you might be getting irritated that I’m talking so much about teaching.
But here’s the secret. You are a teacher. If you’re reading this blog, you’re a learner. And if you’re a learner, you have a pivotal role in encouraging and guiding your own progress. And if that’s not teaching, what is?
To be a successful teacher ,for yourself and others, learn from my experience and avoid these top teaching traps:
Blaming the student
It’s been weeks. Your student (or maybe you) made zero growth on the skill you’re trying to teach and seems to have lost motivation. Do you shrug your shoulders and chalk it up to laziness or a bad attitude?
You’ve given your best explanation of a key concept, repeating yourself several times, and the student just isn’t getting it. Do you decide they must not have been paying attention?
In short, when something goes wrong, do you blame the student? If so, you’re falling into possibly the most common and insidious teaching trap. Because guess what? The only person you can control in any teaching situations is yourself. If something isn’t working, it’s your job to calmly, curiously, kindly take responsibility for determining what’s not working and how you can collaborate with the student to find a better path to learning.
This might mean explaining things in different ways or different modalities. It might mean supporting a student in troubleshooting their practice. it might mean breaking down a skill into smaller chunks. It might mean harnessing technology like recordings or tunings apps. What it doesn’t mean is making the student’s lack of progress solely the student’s problem.
Assuming the student cannot grow
It is undeniably true that some skills come more quickly to some people than others. And that some people are naturally better at things than others. Often, that variation can be profound. But it is mistake to write off the possibility of growth due to lack of skill or a slow learning curve. Each and every student, excepting the comatose, can make progress. No matter where your student starts, you job is to help the grow– and to celebrate that growth.
Failing to treat the student as a collaborator
If you treat your student as an object to be shoved on down the road, you’re not actually teaching them the skills they need to make progress when you’re not around. Students need to become active participants in their own learning. They need to grow the key skills of goal setting, self-monitoring, and self-reflection, or they’re not going to be equipped to continue educating themselves when you are not in the room. The best kind of teaching engages students as partners.
Teaching to serve the music, not the person
This is one that I didn’t see much of in the public schools. But I saw a ton of it out in the musical wild, and I think it’s a trap to which music teachers, many of whom received a lengthy and thorough education in performance and a cursory or nonexistent education in pedagogy, are especially vulnerable. If you’ve spent your entire life attempting to play music with more skill and beauty, it becomes easy to assume that your teaching focus should be….the music.
It’s not. Your focus as a teacher always needs to be squarely on the person making the music. It’s not about how good the music sounds how cleanly they execute a score. It’s about how you’re empowering them, over time, to advance toward their short term and long term goals. Our job isn’t to do right by music; it’s to do right by people.
Have I, at times, still managed to fall into one or the other of these teaching traps, either with myself or my students? Of course. But because I learned to recognize them early, I’ve been better able to evade them when they tempt me.
And now, so can you!
Support the Blog!
Maintaining and writing this blog is a labor of love, and any contribution is gratefully received!