Want to be a great teacher?

Learn by Doing

“Suddenly I understood their boredom. I was teaching from memory, drawing on images of plant lives that I had witnessed over years. The green images I thought we shared as human beings were not theirs, thanks to the supplanting of gardens by supermarkets...”

Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass, p.135)

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She learned quickly that if you want students to be on the same page as you, you have to give them the experience of doing whatever you are teaching. It is not enough to convey your experience to them in words. In her field, hands in the dirt is the best teaching tool.

I started out my adult life teaching elementary school. My first classroom was in Rio Linda, California, and I was a student teacher. My master teacher was Deana Machiavelli, and my students were not privileged in any way. Many of them were children of migrant workers, so the classroom population ebbed and flowed. It was also designated “Special Education.” Most of the kids were nine or ten, knew English as a second language, and because they were transient—moved with the crops—they performed below grade level. Deana was a brilliant teacher. She taught by doing—if we were working on a nutrition lesson, we cooked and ate, with students doing all the shopping, preparation, cooking and serving. We entered a float in the Camellia parade, designed by our kids around a history lesson on ancient Greece. We covered a “chariot” with camellia blossoms, made togas out of bed sheets, and strung ivy garlands for our heads. Being her student teacher helped me appreciate that everyone learns best by engaging as many of the senses as possible, and when you can, doing the hands-on work that will show rather than tell. Integrating the sensory experiences makes the reading, writing, and arithmetic involved in any lesson more palatable and understandable. Especially for children who do not read well, and are not well grounded in vocabulary, doing is essential to learning.

We all learn best by doing, especially when we make mistakes that have to be corrected. That year in Rio Linda, when my class made ice cream, we didn't beat the eggs well enough before adding them to the cream mixture. We ended up with lumps of yellow egg in our vanilla ice cream—not very appealing. Lesson learned. When we say and do things that intentionally, or unintentionally, wound others, apologizing for that mistake is also part of leaning. We learn to take responsibility for our words and deeds. There is no more important life-lesson to teach children than that. And, of course, to practice what we teach. One lesson I learned from Deana that I have never forgotten is that kindness and happiness go together. You can't have one without the other.

                                                        In the Spirit,

                                                           Jane