I’ve been feeling rough this afternoon, and after class, somehow, I managed to cycle the 6 or so miles back to my house. I don’t really recall anything from that journey, except thinking to myself how good my traffic instincts are; I’m pretty good at judging how a driver is going to behave, how a […]
I’ve been feeling rough this afternoon, and after class, somehow, I managed to cycle the 6 or so miles back to my house. I don’t really recall anything from that journey, except thinking to myself how good my traffic instincts are; I’m pretty good at judging how a driver is going to behave, how a road surface is going to feel, that sort of thing. Instinct, I thought, like some magical cycling sixth sense that helps keep me safe, confident in my abilities to negotiate the wild west driving style of Bradford. (Well, wild east actually, but never mind.)
But then I thought actually, is it “instinct”? A year or so ago I had to have an operation, and I was categorically out of the saddle for 3 long loooong months. To be fair, for the first 2 months after the operation it wasn’t that appealing, but the last month was a long one. At the end of that period I got back on my bike, and, for the first couple of weeks, I was timid and nervous about busy roads. I mean, I’m not a fan, but I’ve been cycling busy urban roads on an almost daily basis for the last 15 or so years. Specific events notwithstanding, they don’t scare me. Not only was I nervous and timd, but I was also unsure of myself – how far from the curb, when to ring my bell on a shared path1, manoeuvring, filtering, making use of appropriate on-road infrastructure, taking the lane (when safe and appropriate to do so), and so on. So none of this is some deep seated innate “instinct” but rather the product of many years of being on the road. It’s one reason I’m a much worse driver than my wife (she learned at 17, I learned when I was 32) – I have less experience, but I also drive much less often – which is why she can parallel park a Volvo in a matchbox, while I would struggle to get a Mini into a bus stop.
And then I got to thinking about teaching. I do a lot of things out of a similar “instinct” – “check your answers in pairs” for instance, is something I almost always do in lessons before whole group feedback. Using my voice to diffreentiate between whole class and one to one discussion. Reading the room – looking at faces, and somehow knowing that people are disengaging, or struggling, or simply tired, and then changing things to offset or change that. Knowing whether an error is best corrected there and then, or whether it is something better left. Greeting students and checking in at the start of a lesson. Whether or not to get students to think about the meaning of unknown vocab in based on context, or to check a dictionary or to simply to explain it. Choosing students based on what kind of response I know they have. Walking the room during activities. I could go on, but you know what I mean. These are all things I have learned. Some through being taught (probably?) but in terms of moving from conscious planning to automatic routines and responses, this has come through practice and reflection.
So as I move forwards into a teacher training role again, I think about my trainees – what tools can I give them that will “land” for them? What strategies will they go “wow, that was great, I’m going to do that again.”? How can I develop their reflective capabilities so they can capture those feelings properly? (I’m agnostic on overcomplicated models of reflection – but then again, perhaps I have developed an instinct for those things too?) Then there are the forms! All those planning documents where I know what is happening and why but I have to write it down for the look of the thing. For me, an almighty pain in the backside but for newer teachers these might be invaluable. Who knows?
Nobody has an instinct or a knack or a talent for teaching. We might have developed a personality type that lends itself to teaching (of which there may be many), and we might enjoy and be genuinely curious about the processes, but we don’t innately know how a lesson is going to play out. Over time, we just try stuff and it works, or it doesn’t. Eventually these things become so ingrained we do it without thinking. These instincts are trained and honed. Sometimes they can be bad habits of course – over-explaining (mea culpa) or jumping in too soon (mea culpa again, at least sometimes).Such things are harder to shift, of course, but they can be shifted through being properly reflexive. It’s hard to do, of course, but it can be done.
Anyway, with any luck tomorrow the cold will be shifted and I can go to work on my bike with a fresh mind and body. I hope so, because it’s a miserable cold. In the meantime, I am going to follow my other instinct which is to have a drink of something warm and retire to bed.
- Rough rule of thumb; ring my bell at 50 yards, then again at 25, then one more time at 10 before slowing down to pass carefully – even if the person is being a passive-aggressive prat, the moral high ground is a much more comfortable place. On one occasion, the person was in fact deaf, and despite slowing down and passing as widely as I could, I still gave the person a terrible shock. I have since learned BSL for “sorry” and “thankyou” should a similar situation present itself.
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