My Favorite Mistake: A Taste of My Own Medicine

My Favorite Mistake

Who:  Katie Wall

Role:  Director of Evaluation & Coaching, former data specialist, Curriculum Coach, and middle school math teacher

    Recently, I attended a 2-day training on Scrum - a way to monitor group progress on large-scale and small-scale projects.  I walked in with few expectations, except that the process could be used in many realms of my current role in Central Office.

    But within the first hour, I quickly realized this was going to be a rough two days.

    Our instructor had only a business background.  So I was left to apply terms like "waterfall", "agile", "scrum", "Kanban", "user story", "sprint", "iteration", and "Product Owner" to the education realm on my own.

     This probably could have been easily accomplished.  I was with 6 other colleagues that are significantly smarter than me.  And we already collaborate and work quite well together.  So direct application to our world seemed pretty feasible.  Had we had the opportunity to collaborate and talk out our thinking.  

      But for slide after slide after slide and bullet point after bullet point, our instructor continued to talk and explain and talk and explain, while we each frantically scribbled as many notes and arrows and asterisks as possible.  Every 10th to 15th slide, one of us was able to interject a clarifying question.  But the opportunities were limited.  And to be fair, there were long moments of time where even if we had a question, we wouldn't have been able to articulate it.  We didn't really know what we didn't know.  

      As he talked, he did take the time to formatively assess the room of 9 people (there were also 2 software engineers in the course).  He chose two ways to assess us: "Everyone okay?" and quizzes.  The "everyone okay" method was an opportunity for me to nod.  Because honestly, by the time he asked, I'd met my saturation point 5 slides earlier.  And listening to him talk more was not going to increase my understanding.  I needed to talk it out.  For the quizzes, I used my study guide to find the answers - not my extensive asterisks and scribbled "notes" from listening.  Or everyone else's answers, since we went over the quizzes, one question at a time, as we read the questions one-by-one and timidly stated our guesses of A, B, C, or D.  Note the software engineers missed questions too.

     After closing my workbook full of study guides and quizzes, I quickly realized I had a major issue.  Although I'd spent an extensive amount of my time being "taught" material, I had not learned what I needed to - how to apply it to our world.  I'd gotten no lower than an 85 on any of my quizzes over the 2 days (thanks, study guide).  But I had no business taking it back and applying it, which was the entire purpose of the training.

      And here is where my favorite teaching mistake came in...

      For 5 years, I taught 7th and 8th grade math at Clayton Middle.  Day in and day out, I took great pride in "teaching" students from all of my infinite expertise in ratios, proportions, area, volume, and equations.  I explained the steps, explained my thinking, explained student mistakes, explained definitions, etc.  I reveled when students celebrated their 100s on quizzes.  I high-fived kids when they mastered the is/of = %/100 equations.

      But I talked much too much.

      I rarely extended trust to students to talk out their thoughts to others.  I rarely provided time for them to verbalize their thinking, to process out loud, or to dig into their misconceptions with other students.  I rarely gave students opportunities to truly learn through making their own meaning.

      My mistake was that I equated me teaching with students learning.  And I now had the experience as a student to see this from my students' perspectives...

•  Just because I was talking did not mean my students were learning.
•  Just because they were nodding did not mean they understood.
•  Just because they aced a quiz did not mean they were ready to apply an algorithm to anything close to a rich word problem, never mind the real world.
• Just because they were attentive to my eloquent explanations of area does not mean they were engaged with the material.
• Just because I thought I taught content did not mean my students came away from my class as better learners.

     I have to admit this was an unfortunate revelation.  I realized it before this particular experience.  But seeing the same scenario from a student perspective, as an actual student, made me see it through a clearer windshield of understanding.  Because for this Scrum course, I already knew I needed to be ready to apply it, and already knew how it was relevant to my every day. But the time to do so was not a part of the instruction.  And thus, I'm sorry to say, the ability to make my own meaning of my learning and apply my understanding did not happen to the extent I probably needed.  Much like the experience of many of my former students, I assume.  And sadly, I'm not sure middle schoolers are ready to say, "Hey, I'm not with you.  Can we talk out how this applies a little more?  I'm not sure I'm learning...".  

     At this point, as I work with adult learners, I've learned at that not all learning comes from me - much of it comes from the other learners in the room.  I'm learning as much as anyone else in the room.  Hopefully, today I'm better with fellow adult learners than I was with my middle schoolers.  

    If not, hopefully we're all be more willing than I was to speak up and say, "Hey... can you give me a minute to make my own meaning?  I'm not sure I'm learning..."