Always Get the History
I was talking to my cousin's wife on Christmas. She's an elementary school teacher who just graduated from college and is now on the hunt for her first full-time job. She was telling me about the tactics she used during her student teaching in order to make sure that the kids in her class behaved.
One method she used was called "Gimme Five". You say this to their students, and then they're supposed to put up their right hand (as though they were being sworn in under oath in court) and do five things: "Sit up straight. Mouths closed. Listen." And so on. There's five of them, and the kids are supposed to be able to rattle them off if you ask them to, and to execute them if you say, "Gimme five." It's like calling the kids to attention.
Another one she mentioned in passing was called S.L.A.N.T., a mnemonic where each of the five letters stands for something, similar to the "Gimme Five" approach.
I asked her where these methods came from, and she told me that she wasn't entirely sure. Then I asked her what she would do if she ever came up with her own acronym or other method that made it more effective for her to get her student's attention whenever she was ready to teach them. How would she tell other teachers about it? Where would she publish it? She didn't know the answer to that question, either.
For so much of our academic careers, we're instructed simply to follow instructions. We're given protocols and expected to follow them and there's little, if any, time devoted to teaching about the shortcomings of the current methods or what to do if the current methods ever don't work for us. We're never given any instruction on how to be creative if the need arises.
Little children often believe that vegetables come from the grocery store, and are not grown in the ground on farms. Similarly, a lot of adults take it for granted that the methods and inventions they use in their day-to-day lives had to be created by somebody who recognized the need to create them.
We're not taught to recognize the need to create. We're taught to leverage and endure what's already there for us.
It's a lesson that most of us learn because it's easy. In the computer programming world, there's a development methodology called "agile". It's what we use at the company that currently pays my bills. There's good things about it, but there's things I don't like, and no part of me was ever encouraged to build or improve upon agile if I ever felt the inclination. (Someday, maybe I'll develop something better and try to promote it in the software world.)
Granted, there are acronyms everywhere in our world that are supposed to help us remember standardized steps, and people doing very important work (like, say, elementary school teachers) are unlikely to need them to remember steps after a few years of teaching. Empirically, you just develop instincts about what works and what doesn't to keep kids attentive. Experience is a much better teacher than process. And it can be difficult to distill the benefit of all of your experience down into one acronym like S.L.A.N.T. for new teachers to use.
Whatever your profession, when someone tells you how to do something, I think it helps to ask why. Why are things done this way? Who came up with it? Under what circumstances were the current methods created? What specific problem(s) did they solve when they were created? By becoming a historian, you'll start to understand what drove the great innovators in your field to create. And when you end up in a difficult situation in your career, you'll have an easier time recognizing when you should be using the creative process yourself instead of falling back on laurels.
And if you're a professor teaching students about their future careers, you'll be much more effective if you play the role of an historian. Teach the history behind the "how to" processes that you're teaching your class. You'll empower your students with the knowledge of the past and make it easier for them to deal with their futures when they arrive.
One method she used was called "Gimme Five". You say this to their students, and then they're supposed to put up their right hand (as though they were being sworn in under oath in court) and do five things: "Sit up straight. Mouths closed. Listen." And so on. There's five of them, and the kids are supposed to be able to rattle them off if you ask them to, and to execute them if you say, "Gimme five." It's like calling the kids to attention.
Another one she mentioned in passing was called S.L.A.N.T., a mnemonic where each of the five letters stands for something, similar to the "Gimme Five" approach.
I asked her where these methods came from, and she told me that she wasn't entirely sure. Then I asked her what she would do if she ever came up with her own acronym or other method that made it more effective for her to get her student's attention whenever she was ready to teach them. How would she tell other teachers about it? Where would she publish it? She didn't know the answer to that question, either.
For so much of our academic careers, we're instructed simply to follow instructions. We're given protocols and expected to follow them and there's little, if any, time devoted to teaching about the shortcomings of the current methods or what to do if the current methods ever don't work for us. We're never given any instruction on how to be creative if the need arises.
Little children often believe that vegetables come from the grocery store, and are not grown in the ground on farms. Similarly, a lot of adults take it for granted that the methods and inventions they use in their day-to-day lives had to be created by somebody who recognized the need to create them.
We're not taught to recognize the need to create. We're taught to leverage and endure what's already there for us.
It's a lesson that most of us learn because it's easy. In the computer programming world, there's a development methodology called "agile". It's what we use at the company that currently pays my bills. There's good things about it, but there's things I don't like, and no part of me was ever encouraged to build or improve upon agile if I ever felt the inclination. (Someday, maybe I'll develop something better and try to promote it in the software world.)
Granted, there are acronyms everywhere in our world that are supposed to help us remember standardized steps, and people doing very important work (like, say, elementary school teachers) are unlikely to need them to remember steps after a few years of teaching. Empirically, you just develop instincts about what works and what doesn't to keep kids attentive. Experience is a much better teacher than process. And it can be difficult to distill the benefit of all of your experience down into one acronym like S.L.A.N.T. for new teachers to use.
Whatever your profession, when someone tells you how to do something, I think it helps to ask why. Why are things done this way? Who came up with it? Under what circumstances were the current methods created? What specific problem(s) did they solve when they were created? By becoming a historian, you'll start to understand what drove the great innovators in your field to create. And when you end up in a difficult situation in your career, you'll have an easier time recognizing when you should be using the creative process yourself instead of falling back on laurels.
And if you're a professor teaching students about their future careers, you'll be much more effective if you play the role of an historian. Teach the history behind the "how to" processes that you're teaching your class. You'll empower your students with the knowledge of the past and make it easier for them to deal with their futures when they arrive.