Film at 11

Teaching Can Be Tough

Teaching can be tough. It can be especially tough if the student has no interest in the teacher, the subject, or for that matter, the world. The question that comes to my mind is "Why is this student reluctant to learn from me?" There have been so many answers to that question over the years: I look too much like mom, the student didn't eat breakfast, the student can't read, the student can't read in English, I am the class right before lunch. You name it.

The first step in teaching, as in the writing process or scientific method, is to figure out what the problem is. If I look too much like mom, that's a very different problem from my student can't read in English. Next, I'd start to generate possible solutions to the problem (i.e. approach the student gently, start speaking Spanish, apply brute force) and one by one, start trying them to figure out what works.

I am reminded of Ruthie, a seventh-grader I have known since she was in diapers. One summer, I was Ruthie's piano teacher. It was summer. Ruthie was tired, hot, and ready to go swimming. She was not ready to learn how to read music. When I walked into her living room, Ruthie sat down at the piano bench, but sometimes, she would sit facing away from the piano. Sometimes, she would hide under the piano. And sometimes, she would start running around the piano. Anything to avoid a piano lesson.

After several weeks of disastrous lessons, I started to zero in on the problem. At first, I thought it was that Ruthie hated the piano. But then, some weeks, I would walk in and she would be picking out tunes. I knew it wasn't that she hated me, because she would come bounding down the stairs to hug me each week. As I kept observing her, I noticed that when Ruthie made a mistake in the music, that's when the running around started. The problem wasn't that piano was boring. The problem was that she was scared of failing.

Okay. Possible solutions. I tried lecturing Ruthie about the importance of making mistakes. We even developed a gesture to show how we didn't care -- every time she made a mistake, we blew it off the piano keys and waved goodbye so it wouldn't bother us anymore. That lasted a week. Finally, after more trial and error, I decided that the best approach was for Ruthie to play whatever she wanted. Piano lessons weren't about getting things right or wrong, they were about making music. So that's what we did. Some days it was "Do Re Mi" and some days it was Britney Spears songs, but we played.

And that's how teaching works. It's about playing, tinkering, but most of all, enjoying what happens along the way.

Posted by Meredith at July 1, 2002 10:00 AM