BRX Pro Tip: How to be a Better Teacher
Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I know in our work we find ourselves attempting to teach quite a bit, our studio partners, our clients, our community partners. What are some strategies and tactics to become a better teacher?
Lee Kantor: Well, here are some things that the better teachers do. Number one, they meet people where they are. They keep checking for understanding. They use examples and analogies. They let people practice and mess up in safe environments. So to do all those things, ask more questions than you answer. Instead of explaining everything, ask what do you think happens next? Why do you think we do it this way?
Lee Kantor: Make the person you’re teaching think through things. Make them have a deeper understanding of the why behind things. And then, give them the opportunity to teach it back. Let them teach somebody else, because a great way to learn something and to teach something is to allow that student to become the teacher. When they’re teaching it to somebody else, then you’ll see how much they understand. The better they can explain something to someone, that means that they have that depth of knowledge that you’re trying to transfer. So have them first explain it back to you in their own words, and then you’ll know if they got it or not. And then have them teach somebody else and watch them, and then you’ll see if they really understand what you’re explaining.
Lee Kantor: Always try to break, you know, big concepts into smaller chunks. Don’t try to teach everything at once. Do it incrementally. Pick one concept, make sure they got it, then move on to the next one. And the better you are at teaching, the stronger your team is going to become, and the less time you’re going to spend fixing their problems. And you’re going to have a stronger team, you’re going to have a better run organization when you have more people that kind of have that depth of knowledge that you have and that can explain it to others.
Lee Kantor: So, this is something that’s worth getting good at. So, invest some time in learning how to become a better teacher yourself.
