The Skillful Teacher

Maxim 7: Create Diversity
Chapter Nine has dealt at length with this maxim, so I will only
mention it briefly here. Every class, workshop, or learning event
should contain at least three different learning modalities. This will
Surviving Emotionally
267
18_980668 ch14.qxp  7/27/06  3:28 PM  Page 267

---

268
T
HE
S
KILLFUL
T
EACHER
raise the chances that at some point in the learning episode most
students will find that their particular learning style or preference
has been addressed, which will be reassuring and energizing for
them. It will also broaden their repertoire of engagement with var-
ious learning styles thus allowing them to flourish in the future in a
greater range of situations than would otherwise have been the case.
If you are consistently working with multiracial groups, you should
make every effort to find some way to do at least part of your teach-
ing in multiracial teams. At the very least, try not to fall into habit-
ual patterns of teaching that spring from your own preferred
learning style.
Of course, the breadth of diversity you can employ will depend
on a number of contextual variables—organizational resources,
available planning time, students’ levels of learning readiness, your
own familiarity with each of the different learning modalities
involved, the racial identity and availability of colleagues, and so
on. There is also a limit to how far you can stretch yourself to work
comfortably with methods that contradict defining elements of your
personality. You can’t be expected to change your style at the drop
of a hat, particularly if it involves doing things with which you have
no experience or training or that make you feel personally very
uncomfortable. For example, my own self-consciousness and shy-
ness makes it hard for me to participate in role plays. My suspicion
of people who reveal their life story with no prompting means I am
not the best person to run highly personal life-history exercises. But
many of us could probably inject a greater degree of diversity into
our teaching than is currently the case.