Teaching — The Education You Never Knew You Needed
It would be difficult to find a proverb more biting than the famous words “Those who can’t do, teach.” This pithy remark may seem valid at first blush — a teacher, one might think, need only know more about a subject than a total novice — but upon closer examination, effective teaching requires much more than mere knowledge. When a teacher steps into a classroom, they are forced to face challenges well beyond the scope of their academic knowledge. Have they planned well enough? Can they keep their students’ attention? Do they have the presence of someone believable and knowledgeable? Knowing the lesson is probably the easiest part of teaching; the real challenge is one of organization and character. This is what makes teaching so much harder that just doing.
Boy do I wish someone had warned me. I arrived at Middlebury College the previous fall as a wide-eyed freshman. Eager to make the most of my experience, I poured all my attention and effort into my first-year seminar Listening and Speaking: A Rhetoric Lab. I listened well, I spoke in discussions, and on the last day of class, with my final speech behind me, I felt satisfied that I’d sucked all the marrow out of the subject. Little did I know I had only scratched the surface of all rhetoric had to offer. Acting as a teaching assistant in the very same class as a sophomore would force me to perfect my own understanding, reexamine my identity, and would reignite my passion for a subject I thought I had finished long ago. In fact, it soon became clear to me that there are several psychologically sound principles that make student-teaching an invaluable experience for any student.
The first of these principles relates to a student’s motivation to learn. As humans, we yearn to peer into Pandora’s box at a young age; we are naturally curious. This drive to discover things about the world around us can be classified as an intrinsic motivation, since the learner learns to sate their personal curiosity. Unfortunately, such learning is often unintentionally discouraged by standardized education. As children grow, they are taught to learn quickly and joylessly in exchange for praise and good grades. Such a system relies on an inferior drive called extrinsic motivation. While extrinsic motivation drives a student to perform well, it often eats away at their preexisting motivations. In general, when someone is externally rewarded for doing something that used to be internally rewarding, they lose natural interest in the thing that originally fascinated them. This is why student-teaching can be a good way to regain one’s passion for a topic. Without the pressure of traditional grading, a teacher’s assistant is free to explore a topic, make their own discoveries, and synthesize information across their areas of interest.
But teaching allows a student-teacher to do more than simply review a topic. The executive tasks inherent to teaching, such as organizing lessons and paraphrasing concepts, allow for a different kind of learning to occur — semantic processing. This type of learning is superior to the basic encoding that occurs when a student listens to a lecture, resulting in a better understanding of the material and a higher chance that the student will remember what was learned for longer. Teaching also promotes semantic processing because teacher’s assistants must manipulate learned material to lead discussions and answer questions. Reviewing class material in this way strengthens the original encoding of information and further promotes synthesis by building associations between one class and another and between class material and a student-teacher’s personal life.
Finally, student-teaching has a profound impact on one’s personal identity at a pivotal point in their life. In developed nations, a new life-stage is appearing; that of emerging adulthood. This term refers to a period of exploration during which an adolescent searches for their role in an adult society. It is all too often the case that students leave college unprepared to join a world that expects them to act professionally. It’s hard to blame them for this lack of preparation, however — they’ve only ever been students. In order to avoid developing dysfunctional worldviews and identities, an emerging adult must try out different roles and overcome challenges in various environments. Therefore, even if a student does not wish to go into academia as an adult, taking on a teaching role can be a highly formative experience. Teaching tests one’s time management, perseverance, and executive functioning, all while creating a stage on which to achieve personal goals. Emerging adults are extremely sensitive to their own self-perception, so it is important for them to experiment with being in positions of leadership and for them to see themselves succeed at complex tasks. Only after students learn how to use their knowledge practically can they be prepared for a post-collegiate existence.
Together, these psychological reasons form a compelling case for student-teaching, so it is no surprise that some schools are already using students as their own teachers. Montessori schools embody the philosophy that children are naturally curious and learn best when they are thoroughly supported in free-form learning. Additionally, the Montessori system asserts that learners must be encouraged to evolve personally and emotionally as well as intellectually. I feel that this idea exists at the very heart of a liberal education model, but that it is often stifled by the call for quantitative assessments and tangible learning targets. But I understand — GPAs are helpful, learning objectives useful. In a world that needs numbers, education must be standardized. And so, I propose a middle ground — teaching assistants.
As a test of the principles explained above, students in the Rhetoric Lab were led in activities that allowed them to teach their peers and critique the work of others. Here is what some of them had to say about peer-teaching…
“[Peer-teaching] makes you more accountable to every aspect of the course.”
“In order to teach, you need to feel confident in your knowledge. This means intensive research that may reveal new information or perspectives that you would not have previously considered”
“Commenting on others gives you more confidence in yourself.”
“Focusing on how to deliver constructive criticism is a skill that is helpful to developing a balanced perspective and moderate attitude — absolutely important to the business world and life after [college].”
“By trying to teach others I began to teach myself.”
