The Author’s Epilogue
If [people] can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.
Ignacio Estrada
The Orange Juice Cure
According to an elementary school psychologist and friend of mine, there once were two concerned parents who talked to my friend about their seven-year-old daughter, who still wet the bed at night. My friend listened to the problem, then asked the parents to explain the pre-bedtime routine. “Well,” the father said, “We have dinner around 6 p.m., and then our daughter does her homework. After that, she plays or watches television until about 8:30. Then she changes into pajamas, drinks a glass of orange juice, brushes her teeth, and goes to bed.” After the father finished his narration, my friend sat quietly for a moment and then gently suggested that they skip the orange juice. The problem resolved itself immediately, and their daughter no longer wet the bed.
Often, the “cure” is pretty straightforward. Do this—and this is the result. Do something different—and a different result occurs. When it comes to teaching and training, one of the cures to the sickness of boredom that ails much instruction today seems obvious: When instructional strategies change, the responses to learning will change. When trainers change how they teach, learners will change how they learn.
Be the Change You Seek
Mahatma Gandhi was one of the 20th century’s major political and spiritual leaders of India and of the world. He is credited with reminding us that we must be the change we seek in the world. A simple story about Gandhi serves to illustrate his words. A mother brought her son to Gandhi. She told Gandhi that her son ate too many sweets and asked him to please tell her son to stop eating sugar. Gandhi instructed her to go home and come back in two weeks. When she and her son returned two weeks later, Gandhi looked at the boy and said, “Stop eating sugar.” The mother protested, “Why couldn’t you have told him that two weeks ago?” Gandhi replied, “Because two weeks ago I hadn’t stopped eating sugar.”
As teachers and trainers, we have to walk our talk. In order to change how our students and training participants learn, we must change ourselves first—and change what we think effective teaching and training is.
When we make the paradigm shift from “trainers talk; learners listen” to “when learners talk and teach, they learn,” a myriad of opportunities begin to appear, as if by magic. We discover new books, workshops, and friends who are already walking the talk and who are willing to help us. We receive accolades that reaffirm the effectiveness of the changes we are making. Colleagues ask us to teach them how to do what we are doing. All the personal experiences that appear as a result of changing how we train are, in effect, our teachers—they help us become the change we seek.
Teaching Is Learning, Learning Is Teaching
At some point in this journey, we finally understand, on a deeply personal level, that we master what we teach, when we teach it. The same holds true for our learners. When they teach and learn from each other, they move toward mastery of the material as well.
Let me put it another way: When we teach, we learn; when we learn, we teach. It’s a natural cycle of human learning that affects every moment of our lives, because the human brain cannot help but learn. In everything we do, we are the learners as well as the teachers. No exceptions. Once we’ve really put our heads around this, stepping aside and encouraging learners to teach and learn from each other becomes easy—and an immensely effective and rewarding way to train.
I’ll end with a wish for abundant blessings for you and your learners, as you teach and train from the back of the room, allowing your learners to take center-stage and truly learn.
Learning is finding out what you already know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know it as well as you do.
We are all learners, doers, and teachers.
Richard Bach
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know it as well as you do.
We are all learners, doers, and teachers.
Richard Bach
Sharon Bowman
Lake Tahoe at Glenbrook, Nevada
August 2008
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