John Mighton's advice on how to teach
By John Taylor; 2007 Nov 09, 06 Qudrat, 164 BE
A couple of months ago I promised to go over the advice to teachers that John Mighton gives in the introduction to the Grade 3 version of his "JUMP at Home, Math Worksheets for the Elementary Curriculum." I purchased this book last summer to show to my eight-year-old son's teacher, named Kim, after I had read Mighton's bestseller, "The Myth of Ability." Mighton started this voluntary math tutoring program using a group of actors with no special expertise in mathematics. This required that he clearly distill advice on learning mathematics and learning how to teach, a double challenge. The full text of this introduction is available online at the JUMP website, but I want to focus on the "common errors" section because it is of general interest, especially for Baha'is for whom of course teaching is a fundamental expression of faith.
Common Errors Made in Teaching the Fractions Unit
Mighton: Do not assume that a student who forgets material easily will never learn the material. Even mathematicians constantly forget new material, including material they once understood completely. (I have forgotten things I discovered myself!) Children, like mathematicians, need a good deal of practice and frequent review in order to remember new material.
JET: This is something I wish I had been told on the first day I entered primary school. To expect to memorize and remember things forever is to set yourself up for disappointment. The brain holds only to what is used and reused constantly; all else fades. But every time you relearn something, it comes back easier, better, shinier, a jewel set in a new setting. And best of all, every time you relearn something, you can teach it better.
Mighton: Also remember that the more excited you are at a students progress and the more you use bonus questions to capture a students attention, the more likely they will be to remember the things you teach them.
JET: A famous anecdote is told of a Greek philosopher who gave a student a lesson, then hauled off and slapped him in the face. His reasoning was that the pain and shock would act as a sort of phosphorescent underliner to the learner's memory. Modern psychology since found that positive stimuli are far more effective, and as a bonus less likely to land up the teacher in jail for assault. The brain holds on only to what seems important. If the teacher is indifferent to whether you learned it, the data is marked "expendable;" if the teacher does not regard learning the lesson as an important milestone, memory marks it "extraneous," and learning stops. Mighton did not plan it that way, but actors are the best people he could have chosen as tutors, because pretending to be exited is the first step to becoming a good teacher. Later, when you see the results, you really do become enthusiastic. Then you are not pretending to be a teacher, you really are one. The great reformer of education, Maria Montessori (1857-1952), wrote,
"If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future."
In other words, it is not the transmission of knowledge that counts, it is the manner and attitude by which the information is conveyed. Otherwise, students could learn as much or more simply by sitting back and watching videos or listening to recordings.
As for the role of enthusiasm in becoming a teacher of the Baha'i Faith, the Master wrote,
"They must work with a burning enthusiasm to spread the Teaching of Baha'u'llah among the peoples, so that the radiant light of the Divine Bounty may envelop the souls of all the nations of the world!" (
And the Guardian wrote,
"This spirit of confident hope, of cheerful courage, and of undaunted enthusiasm in itself, irrespective of any tangible results which it may procure, can alone ensure the ultimate success of our teaching efforts." (Letter, 31 October 1936 written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, in Compilation of Compilations, vol. II, p. 309)
The very word "enthusiasm" means "filled with God," and it is a contradiction in terms to try to teach about God with anything short of radiant enthusiasm.
Mighton: Whenever I have taught JUMP in a classroom for an extended time, I have found that I generally needed to set aside five minutes every few days to give extra review and preparation to the lowest four or five students in the class. (I usually teach these students in a small group while the other students are working on other activities.) Surprisingly, this is all it takes for the majority of students to keep up (of course, in extreme cases, it may not be enough).
JET: I just heard an interview (on a PBS pod cast of the documentary film show "POV") with a director who just spent a year filming one of the best grade five teachers in the world, a fellow whose class puts on an entire production of Shakespeare each year in an inner city school. What he noticed about this superstar teacher is just what Mighton says here. Unlike other teachers, who say "You are on your own," or, "I do not have time for this," when a student gets stuck, this fellow stops everything and makes sure that each point is perfectly understood before going on to the next step.
Mighton: I know, given current class sizes and the amount of paperwork teachers are burdened with, that its very hard for teachers to find extra time to devote to weaker students but, if you can find the time, you will see that it makes an enormous difference to these students and to the class in general. By investing a little extra time in your weaker students, you may end up saving time as you will not have to deal so much with the extreme split in abilities that is common in most classes, or with the disruptive behaviour that students who have fallen behind often engage in.
JET: Corruption happens when living tissue mixes with dead and dying tissue, differences harden and the line between life and death becomes obscured. Learning can live uncorrupted only when all present succeed, are involved and participating to their fullest.
What is true of a classroom is true of the world.
Politically, when there is rivalry between states, when there are winners and losers, haves and have nots, the spirit of competition takes over. Then government ceases to act as a learner or teacher, it exploits every chance in order to feed its war machine.
Economically, when some fall into debt and poverty while others are corrupted by wealth, the gears of economy grind and smoke, and the result is global warming. Just as the teacher has to stop and be sure that every student is with her, so the extremes of poverty and wealth must be moderated to enable all to participate to their fullest.
Mighton: Emphasize the positive. If a child gets three out of four questions wrong, I will mark the question that is correct first and praise them for getting the correct answer. Then I will say, `I think you did not understand something with these other questions'; or, `You may have been going too fast,' and then I will point out their mistake -- or ask them to find it themselves! I have found that if I start by mentioning the mistakes, a weaker student will sometimes simply give up or stop listening.
JET: Here is why the Master charged his emotional fire hose with Mehraban, loving kindness, and blasted it at all who stood in His way. This is why Baha'is are forbidden ever to indulge in backbiting and gossip, not only because it is morally wrong in itself but also because it denigrates learning and distracts from teaching. To criticize or gossip is to waste a precious learning opportunity, to show we have not learned what Mighton describes, to be positive even in assessment, always to see the divine, never to betray or dampen enthusiasm, always to incorporate mistakes, flaws and slips smoothly into life's learning process.
Mighton: "If a student is upset by their mistakes, I will sometimes make up a bonus question (that I know they can do) to show them they are capable of doing harder work. (I also tell students that even though I am a mathematician I often make mistakes. And I often start a lesson by telling students that if they do not understand something it is my fault for not explaining it well enough, so they should not feel embarrassed at asking me to explain something again.)"
JET I want to close with a statement by the Master that I think is an example of what Mighton is talking about. If you do not appreciate the need, the extreme value of teaching, why teach? Why learn? What the Master says here should, and would if I had my way, be repeated daily by every teacher and student entering every classroom in the world.
Abdu'l-Baha: "If a child is left to its own natural proclivities, without education, it will embody all human defects. Education makes of man a man. Religion is divine education. There are two pathways which have been pointed out by the heavenly educators. The first is divine guidance and reliance upon the Manifestations of God. The other is the road of materialism and reliance upon the senses. These roads lead in opposite directions. The first leads to the world of the Kingdom; the other ends in the world of human vices and is contrary to the cause of divine guidance. For example, consider a babe at the mother's breast, observe its natural aggressiveness, its instinctive antagonism. It claws and bites the mother, even attacks the fountain of life itself. A barbarous and savage country is a country which has been deprived of education, where men are utter materialists like animals."
"Such a nation embodies all human defects and vices. They even kill and eat one another. Divine education is the sum total of all development. It is the safeguard of humanity. The world of nature is a world of defects and incompleteness. The world of the Kingdom is reached by the highway of religion and is the heaven of all divine virtues." (SW, Vol. 9, 86)
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