Do What I Say, Not Do What I Do?

How many times have you gone to a professional development session where they try to tell you the best way to teach but aren’t demonstrating it at that time? How many times have you heard a professor lecture for hours about how important it is to engage the students and not lecture all of the time? Why are we educating pre-service teachers in old ways but expecting them to teach in new ways? How can we expect people to know how to use technology if we don’t let them use it? How can we expect students to know digital citizenship if we block everything from them? These are just some of the perplexing questions that ramble through my brain.

Whenever I am giving a professional development workshop or teaching a course, I try to teach the adults the same way I would teach my students. I explain this procedure beforehand because I think modeling is so important. Do we think because people are adults that modeling is no longer important? If I am teaching my students, I try to explain the steps that I am doing so they can notice and use them when it is their turn. We can’t expect that people will automatically know what to do without telling them, showing them, and giving them time to try it.

I am so much more engaged when I see a speaker practicing what he/she preaches. I think our students need to see that too. It does no good to tell a student that lying is bad and then let them see you lie to another teacher or administrator. If I want my students to do presentations a certain way, then I have to model this in my lessons. I think of the golden rule my parents taught me about “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.” I would like to adapt this to say “Teach unto others as you would like them to teach you.” I really think if a lot of people kept that in the back of their mind when planning and teaching lessons, the classroom would have a whole different atmosphere.

Now that I’ve stated all of the above, I thought it was important for me to write down what I think is important for my students to learn about presenting information and make sure I model these as I teach them. I thought about what I would like to see when I’m in the audience. I think if these steps are done, presentations would be more successful.
1. Be prepared and know your material.
2. Be prepared in case the technology does not work. Have a backup plan.
3. Know your audience.
4. Practice before presenting.
5. Know how long your presentation is.
6. Make eye contact.
7. Do not read your PowerPoint slides.
8. Move around the room.
9. Involve your audience.
10. Make sure you summarize at the end.

If you think of anything you would add if you were me, please leave a comment. I’m always open to new ideas or I might have missed something important that I take for granted. Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!