Teaching is a Noble Challenge: Realizing the True Complexity of Instruction
When I thought about teaching, I assumed it would be easy. You simply tell people how to do something, and they follow your instructions. If they have trouble understanding, you help them out. Seems pretty simple, right? That was my naive belief and it probably came from my experience of being taught in that manner. This understanding was turned on when I had to teach math to my nephew.
The Challenge of Teaching Until the time I had to teach my nephew, my assumption was that explaining concepts was straightforward. You break it down and the student picks it up. But when I used this method while trying to teach double digit multiplication (79X63) to my nephew, I quickly realized how flawed and incomplete my thinking was. In this problem, we had to carry over numbers, and I had assumed that he knew this concept from school, but when he asked me âWhy do we carry the numbers over?â I stumbled for answers. I knew how to do it, but explaining the why behind it was a different challenge altogether.
This experience challenged my existing views on teaching and removed the blindfold that I had regarding its complexity. From my perspective, teaching was just about passing on knowledge, but after this encounter, I began to view it as a process of understanding where the learner was starting from and meeting them there. I had wrongly assumed that my nephew knew certain fundamentals, but that assumption turned out to be incorrect. This is important because teaching isnât about telling, it is about guiding, adapting and ensuring comprehension.
Learning How to Teach This experience came to the forefront when I was reading one of Seth Godinâs insights on instruction. He describes that there are two types of instruction. One is where the learner is already familiar with the subject and just needs to understand a few things and the other is the learner is completely unaware of the concept and needs the teacher to help them understand the fundamentals before jumping into the lessons. Seth suggests that if the learner is unaware, the teacher should modify their approach to be different and:
Start with the Big Picture â Before jumping into the lessons, it is best to provide an overview of the big picture of what the subject is about. Here give the learner time to understand why something is important and how it fits into a larger framework. For example, I could have explained multiplication as repeated addition and then introduced the concept of carrying digits over.
Respect the Learner â Itâs easy to get frustrated and think This is so easy, why donât they get it? But a better approach would be to practice empathy and engage them with patience, recognizing that not everyone starts at the same spot in their learning journey.
Provide Additional Resources â If a concept is tough to grasp, allow the learner to explore it further than speed run through it. As a teacher, you can use videos, links and hands-on exercises to spur their curiosity and problem-solving abilities. It is also important to understand that it doesnât happen in a single moment and it requires reinforcement from multiple angles.
Iterate Based on Feedback â Teaching isnât a one-way street, it is rather a flywheel, where you teach, test and iterate based on the feedback and student response. If a student is struggling it is on the teacher to tinker the teaching approach.
Use AI for Clarity â Using tools like ChatGPT or Claude can analyze your explanations and help you understand if the teaching style is suited for beginners. In this process, you can also remove jargon or refine unclear concepts. If AI finds your explanation unclear, chances are that a human learner will too.
Teaching Is a SkillâAnd Itâs Hard Teaching must be approached from a perspective different from that of knowledge transfer. It should instead be viewed as a skill where the concepts are broken down in ways that are easy for the learner to understand. It is also important to remember that teaching is a process of continuous improvement and it demands patience, empathy and most importantly adaptability.
After my short teaching experience, I walked away from tutoring with a newfound respect for teachers. Itâs not an easy skill and thatâs precisely why we should embrace the challenge of doing it to the best of our abilities. When we recognize teaching for the nuanced practice it truly is, we can approach it with the consideration and care it deserves. When you take on this mindset, teaching evolves from being a process of knowledge dissemination into a genuine guide that can illuminate paths that might have been previously hidden.
Ultimately, teaching isnât just about what we know, itâs about how effectively we can build bridges between our understanding and someone elseâs curiosity.