This is an analogy that my roommate recently used to help a piano student understand articulation on the piano. “Jump!” — an accented note. “Teeter-totter” describes the motion of the hand play legato notes in a particular passage. “Hop, hop, hop” refers to the staccato notes.
With beaming eyes and a growing smile, she tells me about how her students’ faces light up when something makes sense to them. The right analogy can do wonders for a student’s understanding and application of the proper technique. Guided instruction, successful implementation, followed by emphatic praise from a teacher, and you have happy students who are eager to move forward in their learning.
As a pre-service teacher, testimonies like these inspire and excite me. My own discoveries in learning, as I study to help others learn, are invigorating. Exploring concepts, and having “ah-ha!” moments, in class with my peers gives me a glimpse of what it might be like working alongside a student and helping them understand something they’re learning.
Learning is exciting! And it is now, in my first year of a bachelor of education degree, that I am becoming conscious of this in my own learning. I am grasping the power of curiosity, and of a willingness to engage in a “productive struggle”, as my professors like to call it.
Amid the busy-ness and mounting assignments of mid term season, it is good to be mindful of the bigger picture. I try to let the prospect of teaching float like a shimmering dream in my mind as I learn, write, hand in assignments. Every assignment I complete, every discussion I engage in, every concept I wrestle though — none of this is for me. Well, it is in one sense. It is for me to become a good teacher. But it is for me to become a good teacher so that I may benefit the students I have yet to teach.
I am already serving my future students in my work. I am loving them before I know their names. I am becoming my best so that I can help them become their best.
And that, dear reader, is a bright possibility!
songs of stippled stardust 