Changing Teaching Methods for Teacher-Facilitators

• Differentiated instruction 
• Personalized learning
• Content mastery
• Technology-enabled

If you're a teacher, you probably hear about these concepts and teaching methods regularly. You may also hear about teachers becoming facilitators. If you are like me, you usually hear these phrases couched somewhere between "where we are heading" and "you have to."

Wait! You didn't go to school to become a "facilitator." You wanted to become a teacher (and some days you still feel that way). But, if it IS "where we are heading" and you really do "have to," then why not let me help you move there somewhat painlessly.

In this first post, I merely want to give you something to think about. It might change how you imagine teaching. Think of four or five teaching methods you use regularly in your classroom. Got them?

Okay, now I want you to teach me how to tie my shoes (What can I say? I'm a slow learner.).

Wait, again! Tying shoes is a skill, not "content." True, but content and skills go hand in hand. We could talk about shoe-tying content:

• The Why - If you don't tie your shoes, you'll trip over them and skin your knees.

• The Vocab - This is the tongue. These are the laces. Sometimes laces are called shoestrings or shoelaces.

• The History - Here's how my mom taught me. She said, "The rabbit goes around the tree and into the hole."

The content is all tied to the skill, but isn't that how teaching should always be?

Let's look at a seventh-grade social studies standard from Georgia:

• SS7G3 The student will explain the impact of location, climate, and physical characteristics on population distribution in Africa.

Being able to explain something is a skill. Granted, you have to know quite a bit of content to perform that skill, but it is a skill nonetheless. If we look at teaching that way, it's no longer about a grade. It's about learning the skill.

We don't look at our kids and say, "Wow, you got a 56 on shoe-tying today. You're going to have to go to remediation."

Shoe tying is not for a grade.

Instead, we help them until they get it. "You did it! You tied your own shoes!" Then we all do the happy dance (okay, maybe that was just at my house). Same in the classroom. We help (or facilitate - see how I slipped that in)students, until they can explain the impact of location, climate, and physical characteristics on population distribution in Africa. Then we do the happy dance.

I know this doesn't give you any hands-on methods. Be patient - I can only write so fast. While you wait, think about shoe tying and teaching.

Q Where are you at with this whole "teachers to facilitators" thing?