1-1: The First Tenet
Over my years of teaching, I've arrived at four big ideas, or "tenets" about how to learn well. This course will cover them as they come up.
When I was just starting my teaching career, I spent some time at an alternative school. This was either kids' last stop before juvenile detention, or their first stop afterward. Our most important goal was to keep these kids out of incarceration; everything else, including academic study, was secondary. We employed a restorative justice approach to these kids, meaning we were hands-off, non-punitive, and deeply respectful of their personhood. Even though we had kids who had been accused of/charged with assault or worse, we had no metal detectors.
(This didn't always go well, but that's a story for a different time.)
All of this was in service of making our students feel safe. They needed to be able to let their considerable shields down and, maybe for the first time in a long time, just be kids in school. Everything was about developing relationships. I wasn't always successful, but I internalized formative lessons about teaching and learning during my time with those kids. This is the most important of them:
Tenet 1: You can't learn if you don't feel safe
"Safe" can mean so many different things. Each is valid for this tenet! It could mean finding an environment that is calm enough to promote focus. It could mean having enough time to spend on a topic of study without impacting others. It could mean feeling like you can answer questions without fear of "getting it wrong." However you define safety, your mind can't process new information while you're in fight-or-flight.
It's usually about this time when I get someone saying "Fear is a great teacher." It's not. Fear can lead to adaptation in the moment. The learning comes later, upon reflection. And also, if I may, don't mistake your trauma for a positive learning experience.
When you prepare to study or practice, it can be helpful to perform a quick self-check. How are you feeling? Is your heart rate elevated? Your breathing? Are you thinking about something or someone else that needs your attention? Or, are you apprehensive about the material/course? What's making you feel that way? Is it getting in the way of your goals?
How can you alter the situation to remove these feelings to better focus on the task at hand? Remember that your attention and mental energy are finite resources. Countless things are competing for them, so creating a physical, mental, and emotional space that feels safe for focusing on study will vastly improve learning outcomes.