Teaching Is One Thing… Learning is Another

Teaching and learning are not the same. Teaching is conveying information. Learning requires some kind of engagement on the student part in the process of receiving the information.

Many dedicated teachers express their frustration that their students do not seem to be learning. Some seem to feel like saying, “What do you mean you don’t know this, I taught it!” Teachers that focus on teaching, especially teaching for the next of many standardized tests, cannot believe that their students aren’t learning because the information was covered.

Learning requires an exchange between the teacher and the students. The following suggestions may help teachers move from teaching at students to helping students learn. This can reduce a teacher’s frustration and subsequent fatigue that comes when you teach your heart out and the results do not reflect your efforts.

* Focus on cognitive and metacognitive processes of learning. This means teaching your students how to learn on their own. Don’t just tell your students to take notes, teach them how to take notes and give them guided practice until they become proficient at taking notes. Teach them how to summarize, make analogies, create metaphors, conduct research, and work in cooperative groups, always using guided practice until they master the skill.

* Check in with your students often during the course of a lesson. Stop during the lesson and asks questions like, “What did I just say?, How can you use this information?, How does this information impact your life? and/or “What do you think will happen next?” Questions like this help to get the student engaged in the lesson. Questioning also give the teacher an opportunity to conduct formative assessments to see what the students have learned thus far.

* The person working is the person learning. Ask yourself everyday, “Who did most of work in class today?” and “Who was on stage the students or me?” Some students have to work harder than others to learn but everyone has to work and everyone can learn. The teacher’s role is to provide motivating learning activities that engage the students and the student’s role is to work on rigors assignments, this combination will lead to an increase in student learning.

* Maintain high expectations for all students. Maintaining high expectations is about the teacher’s behaviors not the students. Teachers that have high expectations for all student exhibit behaviors like calling on all students in the classroom, circulating and assisting all students, positive verbal and body language toward all students, gives all students opportunities to demonstrate responsible behavior, and most importantly, the ability to move on and help a student even when that student is not cooperative.