Guerrilla Education: Teaching From the Trenches (Part 7)
There is something unique about dealing with your own children. Having multiple children gives one a larger variety of you and your spouse’s character traits. For example, my son is very much like my wife but in my brother-in-law’s body, while my daughter is built like me with my personality in girl form. My next daughter is similar to my sister’s body and my father’s extroverted personality. My youngest, who is only 6 weeks old, is still undecided on who he will be like. All of our children struggle with the same kinds of sins that plague my wife and I. It is the parent’s job to deal with their sin in order to learn how to train their children in how to deal with theirs. This is the order to how it is supposed to work.
I bring this up because in trying to train our children, we will ask the younger ones to repeat what we asked them to do before sending them out to do it just to make sure that they understood the assignment. I really do love it when they repeat the instructions perfectly, yet don’t know the words I am using so it means nothing to them. See the 3rd law for that one, haha. Often though, particularly with my oldest daughter who spends a lot of time in her own head like I do, she will repeat the instructions, know what they mean, go about doing them, then stop part way through because she became distracted by something. We will then remind her of the job at hand, and away she will go again.
Life is full of reminders. It is the way that God designed man to be: needing reminders. This can be seen in one case in that we have 6 days to work and on the 7th day we rest and worship. In our worship, we are reminded of our place in the universe and what God has done for us. We need to weekly reminder to focus on God before going out into the world. This is by design.
Just as all humanity needs weekly reminders in their duties, so do students need reminders in their studies. This is commonly called review. For the 7th and final law of teaching, Gregory put it this way, “The completion, test, and confirmation of teacher must be made by reviews” (138). As a teacher, one of the most foolish thing one can assume is that just because you told your students something once, or even 3 times, does not mean they are going to remember it. The same thing goes for lectures and lessons. Just because it is covered does not mean that the student know that it was covered. Teaching is like the swirls of a wacky straw, it needs to go around and hit the same spot multiple times. Most courses should be built this way. First, the material is covered in class, then it is covered again in the homework, then in the grading, then in the quiz, and again in studying, and finally in the test. If the student is being studious, that is a total of six times over the same material.
Gregory does give a few violations of the law that are helpful. The first one is that of just a bad teacher. The first violation is a teacher who doesn’t review at all. If there is a teacher out there who does not review, they should probably stop teaching and go find another job. They are not doing the work that is in front of them.
The next fault is giving a review that is incomplete or too quick. This is an easier fault to fall into because of time. Teachers are a slave to clock at all times because there is always more to do than there is time for. To those that are rushed, he does talk about slowing down to review will actually allow for greater speed because future lessons will come easier with a better foundation. Time is a constraint that all humans must function in. Do not neglect quality instruction for the sake of covering more material poorly. The point is for the student to learn, not for the teacher to be able to say that they covered all the material.
The next problem that is easy to do is to push your good review until later in order to save time. I have fallen into this trap of waiting for tests in order to move on with the lessons. Even if I do not score the test for the class, or give the test, it is often good to say that a test is going to happen so that the students study and prepare for it. I always enjoy doing this because there will be a few students who are sad that there is no test because they were ready for it. I then tell them that was the point, to review and prepare. There are always those who did not study who are relieved by this too. Which student do you think is doing better in the class?
The final problem with review is if the teacher makes it boring. Why would one go through the work of taking enough time to review, doing it often throughout the year, and then making it so boring that the dead would struggle finding it interesting? Assuming that a teacher is doing a good job of making the lessons interesting, why would one go through and make the review a bore? Add some life into it. Make it a game. Give bonus points. Play stump the chump with the teacher being the chump (my students really enjoy it when they can come up with a question that I don’t know the answer to). Add some excitement to the day.
My appreciation for review and how the brain works was solidified years ago when I read the book The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. You’ll find it here. It is a great book that goes over how the greatest talents in the world tend to develop in the same locations through a couple of simple principles. It is all based upon how the brain and nerves work. I highly suggest this book for anyone who wants to learn how to develop their own skills.
All this to say, the job of a teacher is only half done once something has been taught. The other half is making sure that it is remembered. Only then can the lesson be ready and useful for life.
Gregory, John Milton. The Seven Laws of Teaching. Veritas Press, 2004.