Think of the most interesting person that you have ever met. even better, think of the most interesting person that you would like to meet . . . in history. It could be someone as special as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Junior or St. Peter, although we will meet him soon enough. How great would it be to have them share their thinking with you? Pretty great, right?
Now, how long do you think you could listen to them? The first hour would be stellar, wouldn’t it? You’d probably need a drink of water and a stretch, but stellar none the less. How about 5 hours? Not too bad, they’d probably have some really cool anecdotes to share with you and you’d get some real insight into what they are all about. What about 20 hours? Okay, that may begin to wear on a person. 20 hours of just sitting and listening is a wee bit long, even when it is the most interesting person you can imagine.
My point, and I am sure you see where this is going, is that too much lecture is just not a good way to learn. While it can be intriguing and valuable in short spurts, in the long run, it’s just not very engaging. I recall with great clarity an experience with a teacher I had in junior high. I sat down in his first class and was enthralled. He was teaching grade 9 Social Studies and he was captivating. He was an intriguing speaker, had funny anecdotes and could really get you to think. The first week was great, and then frankly, he lost his charm. Too much listening and not enough action on the part of his students. I became quite bored.
Now, most teachers are aware of straight lecture being a tool that should be used sparingly but I sometimes think we need to revisit how much we use it, especially in secondary classrooms. I believe sometimes, and I include myself in this, we get caught up in our own ego and think we are far more engaging a speaker than we are. We think that the PowerPoint Slides and our deep understanding of the curriculum is enough to motivate our learners and make them engaged with the content. I think we may be caught up a little in ourselves.
Classrooms are places for connection and relationship. Students are there with their communities and we need to empower them to embrace the knowledge and learning in the room and we won’t do that through lecture. We need to build communities of rich dialogue around content and skill areas. We need to encourage disagreement and research driven thinking to support differing views, raising in our students their level of empathy and their ability to tackle tough situations. We need to raise thinkers and problem solvers.
The great news, I get to see this work being done all the time in my day. I encourage all teachers to really look at how much of their lesson is front loading knowledge through lecture and how much students get to dissect the learning and work with it to form deeper understandings. Break it down, knowledge is powerful.
Keep on learning,
Dave
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