How can we teach students to learn more effectively?
I will do just that by presenting you with two principles and invite you to practice them as you consider the process of teaching the first results of a reform program.
Now we will improve our facilitation.
Before we go into that, I request that you divide yourselves into groups of three to four. You should have some friends to discuss something with each other because I will ask you to pause the video for a while and invite you to discuss the answers to the questions with each other.
Respond according to your group context and we will start playing the video.
Now we will discuss a little how we can improve facilitation without delay. We are looking at two sentences. First, look at this picture. It can be generally understood that someone is teaching it. My question to you. What is education? What is education?
I would like you to divide into groups for a few moments and share some ideas about what education is. While doing so, share some thoughts about the difference between teaching and public speaking. Are they the same thing or are they different in meaning? What is the difference between teaching and public speaking?
Another question for you to explore ideas about what education is is how do you know you are teaching? How can you know?
So how do you know you are teaching if you are teaching?
If you are preparing a classroom or a group of three or four people, I would like you to pause the video for a few minutes.
Why don’t you discuss it?
These two questions lead to a real inquiry into what education is and what it means to you. What are the parallels and differences between teaching and public speaking, and how can you know if you are teaching?
Take some time and I’ll give you my thoughts on what the answer is.
I trust that you have thought about this in small groups and shared some of those ideas with each other.
I like the Hebrew concept of education. There is no word in the Hebrew language. There is no independent word for education. There are only words for learning. And if you want to talk about education, you have to take the word for taught and you put the causal element in it.
Therefore, the concept of becoming a learning factor. Isn’t that beautiful?
What is education?
Teaching means making someone learn. To make someone learn.
I liked the perspective of teaching.
If teaching is about making someone learn, then one of the ways we teach might be public speaking. But if no one is learning when you’re giving a public speech, you’re not really teaching, are you?
So what is education?
Education is to make people learn, to make people learn is to give education.
Now if that is the case, it brings us to the first principle or sentence in particular that you may have heard of.
There is a famous saying about leadership that says I think I’m leading and if no one is following I’m just walking.
It’s laughable but it’s true, isn’t it? I think I’m leading, but if no one is following, I’m just walking.
We can also say that and apply it correctly in the art of education. We can do this. I am teaching but if no one is learning I am just talking.
So if I am teaching but no one is learning, then I am just talking. Why is it that education means making someone learn.
I am teaching but if no one is learning then I am not really teaching.
How will I know that I have taught? I know I have taught others when the other person can present what they have learned and what they have learned.
What is the difference between teaching and public speaking?
Sometimes they come together but you don’t need to speak in public.
If no one learns, you should not teach. Is it just a speech or is often a good way to teach public speaking and sometimes a bad way.
The main thing is that we need to improve our facilitation. If we refuse to accept anything other than the fact that students have learned our definition of teaching is that if you prepare to teach the Old Testament, the students you teach have learned the Old Testament in as much detail as possible.
So it is our first thing that teaching is to make learner or as a phrase I think I am teaching but if no one is learning then I am just talking.
Here is another picture that we can consider. Look at this picture carefully. Who is learning my question? You can see some children in the picture. Which children are learning the most? Which child do you think is learning the most? You may see one girl presenting something and raising her hand to show the other kids asking questions, while others are just sitting and listening and watching what is going on.
Stop the video once again and think about who is learning the most from this video and why.
Why is someone learning the most and why?
I will see you again in a few moments.
Welcome back. You had some time to think about who is learning more in the picture and why.
As you look there you realize that a nanny has prepared something and is presenting it to the room. Another is interacting with her by raising her hand and asking questions or making comments. And others are just listening or watching or who knows what, someone may be playing with their phone.
Our question is who is learning the most and of course the one who learns the most is the one who is preparing and presenting something. She has learned the most and needs to verbalize what she has prepared. So of course he is the number one student in this picture. The second best learner is the girl who makes questions or comments because she is actively participating in what is happening. And the people who learn the least are the ones who are just listening or watching, or maybe they’re just physically sitting in the classroom, but not really listening or watching what’s going on.
This brings us to the tenth principle phrase that will greatly improve your facilitation if you apply it, and that is that whoever is doing the talking is learning. He who does what he is talking about is learning.
There is a strong correlation between who is actively participating and who is learning the most.
So friends, if the goal of our education is that our students want to learn and education is our definition of making students learn, then our education is to apply what the teacher says.
Of course not?
We need to talk less and we need to create more space for the learning environment by talking to the learners and verbalizing their thoughts by asking questions and putting their thoughts and ideas together.
What would you do differently if you believed that whoever spoke was doing the learning. How would you manage the teaching environment?
I bet if you truly believed that for many years it would influence how you prepare your teaching. I think the difference between who is actually speaking and who is teaching seems to be like this.
In fact, it’s the exact opposite, isn’t it? Our students may have spoken 70 times and listened 30 times. Usually in your classes most of them are 70% speaking and 30% doing. I guess they are doing 90 10.
But if we truly believe that he who speaks has learned, then we have to take that balance and we have to turn it upside down. We should structure the academic sessions of our classes in such a way that students should actively talk about the material we present.
We can do that in many ways, but it starts with a change in mindset.
We need to believe that our job is to make them learn, not just by burning, and that they can learn best when they are very active and sitting quietly listening to you head teachers while they talk.
Even if you are the head teacher, you make them talk more and you do well if you talk less.
I have two simple principles for improving your facilitation. Number one should see that your job is to make others learn. Just giving a lecture is not enough. Even if your material is excellent, simply lecturing is not enough. For learning, you are a teacher, a facilitator, helping people to learn.
If you are teaching and no one is learning, you are just talking. And number two, the person who does what is said is learning the most deeply.
Yes, we learn by listening, but we learn more when we think deeply and take measures to try and express ourselves.
We should try to consider what they mean for us, for our church, for our ministry. Its use is to improve your facilitation. Talk less and create learning activities and classroom areas in which you get your students to talk. 70 30 percent I recommend.
Okay, now let’s take these two principles and what we’ll do in the rest of the session is we’ll apply them to the corrective program, especially outcome one. As a result of the remedial program, students are asked to memorize 10 main events from the Old Testament and tell the stories of 10 main characters from the Old Testament.
Let’s imagine that we are going to teach this result in a regular meeting area. Before you do that, you do it as a group practice for a few moments.
Let’s guess what the result should be, what the student should be able to do to get attention, not what the teacher can do. What should students be able to do at the end of this academic session or some sessions.
If you read closely, students should be able to do two things. The right side should be able to remember. They should be able to tell the important recorded events of the Old Testament and number two they should be able to tell and share the stories of the 10 main characters of the Old Testament.
So imagine we’re teaching and we’ve chosen our 10 characters and we go and we give a pep talk about the main events and at the end of our pep talk the students are all excited.
And you should say, now tell me the 10 main characters of the Old Testament. If they couldn’t tell the story, they couldn’t get results. This means they only learned what you taught them. Learners can also remember the events and tell the story of the main characters.
How do you know that you have learned this result? You can tell you have taught it when the person you taught can tell a story and remember the events of the Old Testament.
Challenging, isn’t it? If we define our job as learning, then we have a bigger goal for ourselves that we are not just teaching, but just explaining the material. We teach only when people have mastered the material at the level we called for mastery.
Here’s an exercise to tackle the rest of the time you have.
In small groups you take one outcome and give some ideas about how you would teach it in your school, your church, your classroom.
You will need to choose 10 events and decide how you will use the classroom to have the students memorize the main events and 10 main characters.
Enjoy
Of course I hope you get this exercise to consider how you can learn that result in such a way that it’s really a challenging exercise. You’ll find it especially challenging if you do it right.
Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts on how to be an effective teacher and facilitator of learning. I challenge you that what your students are learning is the mark of your teaching and that you should embrace the concept that anyone who is talking is learning more that you try to think about how to prepare your classroom in such a way that your students are more active. Let them be and do what they said more than before.
Thank you very much.
May God bless you as you help others understand the Word.
Goodbye to everyone from my side.
