Health and Psychology

I started teaching from the first time I attended preschool.  I went home and taught my younger brother.  I taught my peers in the yard.  I taught my friends.  I started teaching in a more formal capacity to a class of students when I was in 7th grade.  I still teach.  I've always liked it and I think teaching is a fundamental part of psychology, whether it's medical education, skills training or assistance with accommodations, it's all teaching.  

I spend a lot of time reading up on teaching theory and pedagogical ideas and new techniques that are entering the classroom.  The questions are the same.  How do we get students engaged with the material? How do we present the material in a way that's informative and helps with critical thinking?

I started off teaching subject material:  math, science, reading, writing, psychological testing, abnormal psychology, and other courses.  There's a text book, used that never quite manages to capture what I want to cover in a course.  I may have readings or handouts.  After some years spent in doing subject material based teaching, I switched.  I no longer teach subjects.  I teach experiences.  I think this has happened in the past 10 years.  If you want to learn assessment from me, here are a group of toys and some assessment materials thrown in.  Here's some information from books on the brain.  Think about what you want to measure and using these toys and material create a measure of something about the brain.  Here's what happens with that assignment.  The students will take an area of cortical functioning, (academic skills are left out of the assessment possibilities) and in a matter of a few hours will come up with a technique to measure an area, test it with another group, scale a series of questions, and come up with something that comes close to what we have in psychological assessment now.  In the process of doing that they will get engaged.

I'm currently teaching a Group Dynamics course at Santa Barbara Business College in Ventura.  Nice place to work.  Small class size.   I have about 13 students enrolled in the course.  We're talking about Group Dynamics.  The text is actually excellent and the students read it on their own.  I supply quizzes with the answers attached in advance of their reading the material, to know what is important to glean from the chapter.  We review the answers to the quizzes and any questions they might have about the chapter the next class day.  The midterm and final consists of the same quizzes without the answers provided.  The class time is spent doing group projects.  Last week was basket weaving.  My part:  here's a basket weaving template, here's a lot of supplies, here's some websites.  Figure it out.  Let me know if you need help.  They worked through the break and wanted to take the materials home to work on.  Meanwhile they get to put the material they are reading about into practice.  How do you manage supplies?  How does someone lead? What is happening dynamically in the group you are in.  Did you form an agenda?  How did you as a group decide what baskets to work on, what supplies to use, what to do?  I think of it as the students learning skill sets.  They teach each other better and learn better.  The material is immediately put into practice.  My role is facilitator.  Since I don't teach the text, my class time is spent telling stories about working in different groups. I've been part of strategic organization change processes in a variety of companies.  I have my own corporation with several staff members.  I'm part of a number of groups rich in information about how groups work and operate.

I have several friends that teach.  Many are lamenting the constant testing process that goes into the curriculum to determine if the students are learning anything.  It puts pressure on the instructor to "teach to the test."  I think if you are going to test students you need to do that the first day of the class.  Get a baseline of how much they know about the subject.  Then let them discover the material and interact with it.  Get them involved.  At the end of the course, test them again to see what they have absorbed.  In addition, have them do something with the course material.  Have some product or outcome, something tangible they have created.  That let's them do more than read and take notes.

In a class I'm taking on teaching, students are sharing stories about what teachers have done that shut them down.  I met a student recently that has a teacher that yells, throws books, and tells students they are stupid.  He openly says he dislikes teaching one of his courses.  That's someone that shouldn't be teaching.  I've only had a couple of very bad teachers.  One was racist.  One was severely mentally ill.  I know that now.  When I was in their class I used terms like "unfair" or "crazy."  I had more teachers that were just not doing things they liked.  As a student I should never know that a teacher doesn't want to teach the subject they've been assigned.  I should never have someone do things that make me want to drop a class.  Teachers like that need assistance, support and mentoring to help them engage with their students, or they need to be counseled out of the profession.

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