Since
the beginning of this course, "Professional Strategies" of PIDP
3260, and my quest to become a skillful teacher, I am digging deep inside
"who I am" and "how can I be more skillful to be more
meaningful" first to motivate myself and then to the rest of the world,
which includes my students, fellow instructors and to the society in a bigger
picture.
I read Brookfield's
chapter 2 for one of my reflections and I felt very comfortable reading his
statement, “…And I know that I cannot motivate anyone to learn if at a very basic
level they don’t wish to. All I can do is try to remove whatever
organizational, psychological, cultural, interpersonal, or pedagogic barriers
are getting in the way of them learning, provide whatever modeling I can, build
the best possible case for learning, and then cross my fingers and hope for
the best.” Brookfield, S.D. (2015)
Yes, this statement was very comforting to ease that feeling of tightness which I was holding in my chest when I was not successful in motivating few of my students enough in achieving their life goal or maybe they didn’t know/have a life goal, or they were forced by someone to be in the classroom, either by their parents, social pressure of the definition of “success” or by the government (who are employment obligated by the Ministry of Social development). There are multi-layers of conditions and reasons why every particular student sits in your classroom, especially in Adult Education.
After submitting my reflection, I felt, I have done my job in expressing myself well and my reflection aligns very well with Brookfield’s theory. I got 100% marks in my reflective writing, which further satisfied me!
But, something down there in my stomach it was still bothering me and I was asking this question again and again, “was I authentic enough for my students who were challenging in their life and couldn’t feel motivated in the class? Did I demonstrate my credibility well to my students that they felt interested to listen to me everyday and felt more curious about the subject? Hundred and one questions visited my mind like a flash mob and I observed those questions coming and leaving my head un-answered but I couldn’t reach any conclusion. In general, I have been known as an empowering facilitator/ instructor as per students’ evaluations, then why this struggle in my head?
One day, I came across this TEDx video when I was searching for some motivational speakers to share with my spiritual group about the benefits of Meditation. Dr. Daniel Amen, who is a renowned psychiatrist, presenting his study on the basis of his 83,000 brain scans caught my attention. His body language is confident and what he is saying is backed by a visual proof of his own experiential learning based on his own hard work of last three decades. Every word he is saying proves his credibility and why he chose to look at human brains rather than guessing his diagnosis like other psychiatrists shows his empathy and extra care for human lives suffering from psychological disorders. I strongly felt, he went an extra mile and rather increased his work doing brain scans not to prove he is different but how caring he is for his patients. That feeling of “extra mile” was a big hook for me and I watched the video repeatedly five times in one stretch; and not only that, I shared it with my kids who are both in healthcare field, shared it with our spiritual group also.
Dr. Daniel Amen made such a strong impact on my brain that I searched for more videos by him and I found this one …..
Now this video says about brain health plan and how we can improve our brain health by changing our lifestyle. I got motivated to learn about the brain health though Neurophysiology was not my favorite subject to teach when I was an instructor in the medical school in India. This “brain health and lifestyle combo” sounded interesting and I watched the second video again repeatedly five times. I got interested in neurochemistry and neurophysiology of our brain and dusted off my Human Physiology book after 10 years. I was surprised how these two videos changed my learning behaviours from not interested to highly motivated student.
Within a week I started following the recommendations of Dr. Amen as mentioned in his TEDx video. Once again, I felt he has gone an ‘extra mile’ in authenticity in sharing his personal and family stories because he doesn’t want to leave an inch of a scope for his patients in believing him. I am not his patient, but I already believed in him and started following his advice on my food habits, daily walks, exercise,surrounding myself with positive people and sharing a sense of gratitude more frequently than what I was already doing.
Once
again, I reflected on my teaching skills and the challenging students in my
classroom. After listening to Dr. Amen, my learning from his talks is:
1. Every student is unique so we need to
treat every student uniquely
2. Authenticity matters!
3. Credibility can be built with the
students through visual examples and sharing the proven results
4. There is always a room to go extra
mile with our fellow human beings forgetting for sometime the hierarchy of our role
as an instructor but demonstrating our very basic role as a human
5. Empathy and compassion work to
motivate people and help them outgrow their own perceptions
I re-visited Brookfield’s book, The Skillful Teacher, chapter
4, What students value in teachers and I seem to agree with what he says here, “
In students’ eyes, an important component of successful learning in regarding
the teacher as both as an authority and an alley ………The elements necessary to
be both authority and alley are credibility and authenticity.” Brookfield, S.
D. (2015, P. 42)
References:
1.Brookfield, S.D., (2015): The Skillful Teacher – On Techniques, Trust and Responsiveness in the Classroom. (2nd Edition). The Jossey-Bass -Higher and Adult Education Series. P. 42
2.TEDxOrangeCoast | Daniel Amen | The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans
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