How do you help other teachers to improve their teaching? A conversation with Eddie Woo
This video was originally published 2 August 2017.
Eddie Woo chats to CESE about maths, teaching and what works best. Listen to the full conversation.
Helping pre-service teachers and in-service teachers to develop as educators and in their understanding of curriculum and their delivery of pedagogy is something I’m really passionate about, because like I was saying before about making a difference in the classroom, this is something that I know makes an immense difference to the impact, positively, that a teacher can have on their students.
I think there are a few different ways that come to mind when I think about it. Firstly, just getting in that classroom and observing. Watching a teacher, seeing the way they do things, and this is actually something that I’ve learned just from myself when I started videoing my lessons, and I think it’s that experience which a lot of people have, you learn what does your voice sound like when it’s from outside your head, and in exactly the same way, what do I look like when I’m at the front of the room and I’m explaining something, and I was shocked by some of the things that I realised, I do that? That looks terrible, or that’s not clear. Why on earth would I think to do that? And the answer was I didn’t think to do that, it was just instinctive and there are better ways that can be developed once we’re conscious of the way that we do things. So providing opportunities for teachers to be observed and to have constructive feedback given to them about, okay, I noticed this aspect of your lesson was great and this one just fell to pieces, let’s work on that. I think that’s the first piece.
I think the second piece is, as much as possible, providing for other teachers to come into my classroom, whether that’s through technology or just physically being in the room, seeing the way that I interact with the students. Helping people see, you know what, my way might not be the best way, but it’s another way, and having lots of tools in your repertoire and different strategies that you can take is so important for a teacher because every room that you’ve got has 30 unique people in it and requires access to a range of different strategies that you can use to help people be disciplined in their approach towards learning and understand things effectively.
So I would say those are probably my go-tos in terms of developing my own staff, constantly asking them the question of, when they come to me and they say ‘how do we do this effectively?’ Just like in my classroom I say ‘well, what’s this really about?’ I pose that question back to them, and often, teachers actually have access to, they have the resources, they have the knowledge to be able to say, oh, the best way to teach these statistics in class and the real meaning of a z-score or a regression line is to be able to say let’s have access to some real data. Let’s get data from you guys and then this will be so much more connected to you because you’ll understand its relevance to your life.
Things like that are things that we can often think through, so long as we have the time and the opportunity to workshop through those ideas with our fellow educators.
I think there are a few different ways that come to mind when I think about it. Firstly, just getting in that classroom and observing. Watching a teacher, seeing the way they do things, and this is actually something that I’ve learned just from myself when I started videoing my lessons, and I think it’s that experience which a lot of people have, you learn what does your voice sound like when it’s from outside your head, and in exactly the same way, what do I look like when I’m at the front of the room and I’m explaining something, and I was shocked by some of the things that I realised, I do that? That looks terrible, or that’s not clear. Why on earth would I think to do that? And the answer was I didn’t think to do that, it was just instinctive and there are better ways that can be developed once we’re conscious of the way that we do things. So providing opportunities for teachers to be observed and to have constructive feedback given to them about, okay, I noticed this aspect of your lesson was great and this one just fell to pieces, let’s work on that. I think that’s the first piece.
I think the second piece is, as much as possible, providing for other teachers to come into my classroom, whether that’s through technology or just physically being in the room, seeing the way that I interact with the students. Helping people see, you know what, my way might not be the best way, but it’s another way, and having lots of tools in your repertoire and different strategies that you can take is so important for a teacher because every room that you’ve got has 30 unique people in it and requires access to a range of different strategies that you can use to help people be disciplined in their approach towards learning and understand things effectively.
So I would say those are probably my go-tos in terms of developing my own staff, constantly asking them the question of, when they come to me and they say ‘how do we do this effectively?’ Just like in my classroom I say ‘well, what’s this really about?’ I pose that question back to them, and often, teachers actually have access to, they have the resources, they have the knowledge to be able to say, oh, the best way to teach these statistics in class and the real meaning of a z-score or a regression line is to be able to say let’s have access to some real data. Let’s get data from you guys and then this will be so much more connected to you because you’ll understand its relevance to your life.
Things like that are things that we can often think through, so long as we have the time and the opportunity to workshop through those ideas with our fellow educators.