After 40 years of teaching, I have retired from the classroom with many lovely memories, a few embarrassing regrets, and loads of acquired insight into what teaching is really about.
In short snippets, I am planning to share some of these insights with you throughout the coming weeks. This is #1.
Teaching is not about teaching at all – it’s about learning
I started my career as a teacher, focusing on what and how I would teach whichever students would be in my class. The content of the lesson was in a schoolbook written by someone who had never met my students. The methods were very much the same as I was used to from my own time at school, spiced up with some new ideas I had picked up from my teacher training, like group work and using drawings and pictures instead of translations. But all the time I, as the teacher, was in total control.
After many years (far too many), I started calling myself a tutor. This was the first step in shifting the focus from my teaching to the students’ learning. As a tutor, I started listening to the students’ wishes, ideas, and even moods. I saw myself hovering over the students, not controlling but tutoring them in the direction of learning. I even wrote a manuscript for a book “Only the free bird will fly” about the new methods I had learned to activate the students.
During my last decade in class, I turned into a facilitator of learning in a student-driven classroom. I found my guiding star in the Swedish Curriculum § 2.3 (Responsibility and Influence of students), and let my students take control of the contents of the term plan according to their interests. I, as the facilitator of their learning, was serving them with materials, collaborating and guiding them into activities that would make their learning both most efficient and enjoyable.
If you want to know more, there is an article I wrote a couple of years ago in WebEnglish Teaching Matters: 10 steps to create a student-driven class.