The Skillful Teacher

Involve Former Resisters
In trying to convince new students of the importance of learning,
we are always working against the fact that our own expressions of
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its importance will be met with some skepticism. Students will say,
“Of course you’re going to tell us it’s important that we learn this—
after all, teaching it is how you earn your living!” The voices that
will have far greater credibility than ours are those of former students
who were themselves resistant to learning but who came to appreci-
ate its value for them. As described in Chapter Two, organizing a first
class alumni panel made up of three or four resistant students who
were in the course in previous years can be very effective in punc-
turing early resistance. A few words from these former resisters will
have a much greater effect than any appeals you can make.
Model
The missing link in much college teaching is the regular attempt by
teachers to model the learning behaviors and dispositions they have
requested of students. Far too often students are told that a certain
task or learning activity is good for them but have never seen the
teacher engaged in the very activity that is being urged on them.
One of the mistakes I have made many times is to walk into a class-
room on the first day of a new course, announce to students that I
believe in discussion, and tell them why the experience will be good
for them. Then I assign topics to students and put them into small
discussion groups. The trouble with this scenario is that it omits a
crucial element. I have neglected to model in front of the students
an engagement in the very activity—participating in group discus-
sion with peers—I am prescribing for them. As teachers we have to
earn the right to ask students to engage seriously in discussion by
first modeling our own serious commitment to it. If we want stu-
dents to believe us when we say discussion is good for them, we
have to show them how it’s good for us too. So, in any course in
which we’re intending to use discussion methods, it’s a good idea to
invite a group of colleagues into the classroom at an early stage in
the course. We can then hold a discussion in front of the students
about some aspect of the course’s content in which we try to show
the kinds of behaviors we’d like students to exhibit in their own
subsequent discussions.
Responding to Resistance
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