Courses and horses
As I near the time to hang up my teaching hat, I’ve become reflective. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into being a teacher, and I’m left feeling that I’ve finally learned a few things about it. It has taken a while, and, like most learning, it didn’t come without its costs.
Maybe that’s the first and most important lesson about teaching: that which hurts, teaches. The original Latin sounds even better: Quod nocet docet.
I could probably just leave it at that and call this job done, but there are a few more points which I’ve found useful to keep in mind.
What gets counted, gets done.
I guess that’s why we bother to grade student work. If we don’t insist that it get done in a way that counts, it probably wouldn’t get done at all. Not only do people try to avoid pain, they actively seek out pleasure, even if this comes in the small doses of good marks. People respond to incentives.
Any interaction is training.
I’m not a fan of inflicting pain. I think that there is plenty enough of it lying around already, so I don’t need to deliberately add to its total. I prefer to reward achievement. It can be tempting to respond to bad behaviour, in a punitive way, but I’ve come to avoid that, if I can. I ignore it, if possible, and usually things sort themselves out. Of course, the most egregious examples do require a response and sometimes even an emphatic one, but we hope that those situations are scarce and they usually are.
Learning has occurred when behavior changes.
Until learning is demonstrated, it is only theory. We hope that our students learn but we can’t be sure until we can see its consequence through a change in behaviour. A lot of teaching consists of not only setting up situations that provide opportunities for learning, but also opportunities to demonstrate that a change in perception has actually taken place.
Design (and other forms of creativity) are a method, not a subject.
This method is employed in order to find original ideas that have value. The most useful and important skill is the ability to find many ideas, readily and diversely. Most of them will not be valuable, but the more that are found, the greater the likelihood is that a few of them will actually be worth keeping.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
That may, at first, seem like compromise. Maybe it is. As designers, most of us are perfectionists.
We really want to get it right.
And we can get so caught up in this that we neglect to pay attention to our diminishing resources, like time and energy, that we jeopardize reaching any conclusion at all. It is often more valuable to have something that is almost perfect, than nothing at all, however disappointing that might feel.
What we think we become.
So we ought to watch our words. To quote Henry Ford: ‘If you think you can do it, or you think you can’t do it, you’re right.’ Part of the job of teaching is to guard against the self-defeating messages that students often carry with them, and to replace these with more optimistic views.
The Dynamic Duo.
There is an important dynamic between seemingly divergent positions, with this duality typically described as that between self-control and self-expression, or Classical (rational) versus Romantic (emotional) values. It is a reflection of the differences between Left-brain and Right-brain activities. Successful design, and successful design students, must bridge this duality and arrive at a unified conclusion.
We are all different.
Now that’s pretty obvious, but we seem to require reminders anyway. I recall something I read a long time ago, about breaking horses: Be gentle with the timid, steady with the fractious, but lather the sulky ones like the blazes. Although students are mostly not like horses, this bit of advice has been useful to remember.
I’ll stop there, although I could go on for a while. When I first started teaching, I soon discovered, to my great surprise and huge benefit, that the activity of teaching was teaching me a lot too. I had to know what I was talking about in order to talk about it. I scrambled to learn and to stay at least a half-step ahead of the class. It wasn’t always easy but it was worth it. I like to think that we all benefitted.