One understanding of teaching is the blend of expert knowledge with the facilitation of learning. We need people who know what they’re talking about, and that knowledge is useless unless it’s actually being absorbed! Depending on the teaching environment I think a good mix would be at least 50% facilitation. In more student directed learning environments then this could be much higher.
Facilitation means “the act of making easier”, it is not tied to any subject or area of knowledge. It is more of a set of values. In my experience of coaching and learning, important values are respect, listening, awareness, focus, authenticity, humour.
Life coaching is very close to facilitation. If I had to guess then I’d say that in my practice of coaching, the facilitation to expert mix is around 80:20. The expertise that I bring to the mix is based on experience and the tools I’ve learnt in my study of communication. Life coaching is about making it easier for people to get what they want.
I was sitting round a fire with some strangers at a music festival, drawing some sketches in my journal. A girl sitting next to me asked to see so I let her look through the book. When she gave it back I drew idly on the cover. “You can’t have that!” she shouted at me as she took hold of the book and started to pull it out of my hands. I locked up and tightened my grip on the book. I was totally focussed on getting my book back, but I didn’t want to hurt her. After some struggling I twisted the book out of her hands and left. I was breathing hard and shaking.
Afterwards I was amazed that I had reacted so strongly to a book being taken. It occured to me that this was fighting. In my training as a martial artist, I’ve always felt that to engage in a fight is a failure of communication. I wondered how things had gone wrong so quickly and what I could do in the future to resolve a situation before it escalated into a physical violence.
When I discovered non violent communication (NVC) I was interested to read Marshall’s idea that violence can happen with words just as it can with bodies. NVC’s beliefs are
- all humans share the same fundamental needs, and this is beautiful
- human behaviour is the result of people wanting to fulfil their needs
- our learnt language patterns can precipitate verbal violence
- learning new patterns that focus on the underlying needs can help keep our conversations useful and peaceful
- useful communication raises quality of life
I’ve been putting NVC into practice, and I’m convinced it is helping me to resolve potential conflict. When I can put myself in someone else’s place and understand the need behind their actions, I can more easily emphathise with them. Together we can work out how to fulfil their needs.
So where does this fit in with learning-to-learn?
- many teachers could benefit from new tools for handling communication violence in the classroom.
- everyone’s personal life could benefit with increased capacity to empathise.
- understanding our own needs allow us to actually ask for them to be fulfilled - which leads to a greater quality of life.
One way of viewing a teacher is as a high status person who gives out lessons to their eager students. A teacher who views themselves in this way runs the risk of getting too involved in their own story of how great they are and how privileged their students are. They lose the chance to connect with their students.
Recently I was teaching martial arts to a friend and a girl of 10. I had my plan, my idea, and how I wanted the lesson to progress. I got so into my story that I missed the signs of my students losing interest. They picked up some hoola hoops and started playing with them instead!
If I had been more aware of my role as a guide, and been more focussed on where my students were, I could have switched to a new game and perhaps held their attention to what I was teaching.
Luckily for me, my friends found that a movement in the hoop that was very like what we had been practicing before. The hoola hoop break brought us back to the martial arts and I was able to finish teaching the idea I wanted to share.