Skip to main content

Window Streaks and Learning


Early in my marriage, my wife and I would infrequently haul out rolls of paper towel and window spray for the detestable work of washing windows.  One of us worked on the outside and the other from in the house.
Inevitably, one of us would tap in the window and point to a streak or spot that the other had missed.  The trouble was that the person with the spot or streak couldn’t see it.  We simply needed to trust each other’s eyes, follow the pointing finger, reapply the spray and wipe a bit longer.  
At times the work leads to laughter, sometimes not.
Just this week I relearned the wisdom of this lesson again, twice: once in my classroom, once in another venue. Both reminded me of how much I need to continue learning.
The classroom application came in a class in which I had been practicing a concept that I had been teaching the students for over two weeks and which would be on an up and coming test.  Though the students could work magic with the concept in a closed context (a school context), they, without realizing it, were lost to do so in a real-life situation.  
I could see the spots on their side of the glass, but they could not.  Their vision for the concept was limited.
One student asked me when we could use this concept in everyday life.  Having shared this at the beginning of the teaching two weeks earlier, I reminded and restated the example. The class looked at me and nodded, remembering that the discussion had taken place, but that was all.
They could see the spots on my side of the glass, but I could not. I had not taught the full use of the concept.
Nodding at myself, I took a step back and asked how the class would feel about going back to the beginning, building an assortment of scenarios in which we could use what I was teaching them, breaking up into groups to practice it, and then speeding up the question and response time so they could master it.
The energy level of the room told me that the answer was yes.  The smiles told me that I had found the spot on my side of the glass and washed it away.
Together we practiced, checking in with each other.  My job was to keep sharing scenarios that were real and relative to my students.  The students’ job was to practice hard and let me know how their understanding was growing.
In the end, we could all see better.  Our window was clean.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Maintaining the Road of Learning

I have spent my entire life living in Michigan, the Great Lakes State, the state of ever-changing   weather,  the state with two seasons (despite claims to the contrary); Winter and Road Repair... a state   loaded with metaphor potential. And in as far as this is all true, I would like to link a Michigan-related  metaphor to learning and an encouraging recent experience. One month ago, I welcomed a brand new group of foreign language students into my classroom. This group had been blessed by the energy of a very gifted and caring colleague of mine for the first three trimesters of their learning, and because of this, I knew that they had come to me well- prepared. So immediately, on the first day of class, we launched into learning...learning about each other, learning about our interests, our fears, our hopes, all of those first day activities. In a very short time; however, it became clear that this class was different from others that I had experienced in th

Community in a Time of Struggle

Today I opened the first three volumes of my Great Books series from 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica, mostly to find the word “community” in the syntopicon which makes up volumes two and three of the set. These two volumes contain over 100 major themes that frame up what is called “the great conversation”.  At first, I found myself disappointed at not finding the word community as an entry or essay topic in the syntopicon, but then I took a second look and recognized a new perspective on the matter. The specific topic of community was not granted an essay in and of itself because the entire series is about community. Every one of the topics who found their themes in the contents of these volumes, every one of the 54 volume set of books, is flooded from cover to cover with community. Whether the theme is angel or aristocracy, hypothesis or habit, liberty or law, wealth or wisdom; from Aeschylus to Freud, these volumes in their contents validate the importa