This is a very interesting article for me by Gary Lewandowski and David Strohmetz that sometimes have us believing that “When the students do well – we take the credit…. And equally, when they do badly, we blame them for being lazy !!”
The article for your reference is…
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/10/28/lewandowski
I know myself this very feeling… It’s frustrating. I take the same attitude though of the stage performers like Tommy Cooper who says “If they don’t laugh – it’s ‘cos I’m not funny”. Equally I accept that students don’t engage for one reason ‘only’ – and that is my lack of ability to engage them !!
This is harsh but surely true on my part. My job is to ‘engage’ them – that is my job.
The results for ‘The Big Picture’ are often quite immediate (we get engagement throughout the event and written feedback at the end) unlike that of a teacher at school who gets the ultimate measurement when the exam grades are announced a whole 10 months later!!
I think as humans there is a natural ‘default’ to blame others and believe that we have given excellent learning with brilliant research and the best ways of engaging the class… BUT is this always true?
When I first started doing what I do today, I used to believe that what I did was perfect; but yet it’s amazing how I’ve managed to improve upon ‘my previously perceived perfection’ . This is not arrogance just a little denial on my part because I don’t want to accept responsibility when things don’t turn out as I would like.
This is a big learning for me. For me, the responsibility is in two parts
- Me to deliver phenomenal teaching
- Students to utilise this teaching, work hard and deliver good exam grades as a result
This statement at least ‘feels’ right on my part. All I have to do now is deliver ‘phenomenal teaching’ and hope that my students keep their part of the bargain !!
