Make Yourself Clear

8Rebuilding Teaching around Immediacy

Tip

For all readers: Here is another place where we'll offer a chance to skip ahead should you not be interested in an extended examination of the ways in which new understandings about how people learn have challenged traditional teaching approaches and the modern teacher's mindset (once again, look for our prompt). This opportunity to skip is another use of a teaching technique that considers pacing, segmenting information, and introducing choice. Whether you exercise the option or not, if the presentation of the option appeals to you, consider how you might use it in your own work with clients, customers, or teammates.

In a classroom, training's the thing, and it begins with curriculum. Think of curriculum as everything students learn and do in a classroom, school, or training program. Most school administrations insist that such work, as an accountability measure and because it is good for teachers to think through their courses and students to know where they are intended to go, be documented and driven by a student‐facing syllabus and assignment sheet. These documents tell students what they are going to read, do, learn…and in what daily doses. They tell students what they have to do for homework, when they will be tested, and how those tests will add up to a grade.

Steve remembers his own training as a teacher. Nearly 20 years ago, he worked alongside a teacher who had been in the classroom for nearly 20 years himself. A crafty ...