Weather and learning

If you look closely, there is enormous diversity.  This can be a problem.

Our tutoring consultant was headed home recently, walking from the bus stop to where he lives here in Alexandria.  At a certain point the air got slightly, but noticeably, warmer and more humid.  He’d entered a microclimate under the influence of the Potomac.  It’s actually a very stable border, not shifting more than a couple of blocks, and persists throughout the year (with different effects, depending on the overall weather).  Being in the mood to make comparisons, he decided that teaching and learning have their microclimates too.

Of course each student is different, at least a little unlike the next.  Each learns, or fails to learn, in a different way.  Two of the tutors where our consultant works provide an obvious example: one needs to sit down and work on the material for twenty minutes (especially a foreign language) before he really starts to make progress; the other cannot concentrate on anything for longer than twenty minutes.  For some, pictures are more easily grasped than words or equations; for others, it’s not so clear.  Our navigator once went to a short bit of economics training where he worked.  One  PowerPoint slide had a definition of a term in words, and he really had trouble putting them all together in a meaningful way.  The next slide (the lecturer apologized to the audience for the necessity) contained an equation, and our navigator instantly understood.  Most of his colleagues at that time much preferred learning packaged as a game, while to him such a presentation felt as if he were not quite being treated as an adult.

But the subject matter also imposes its own differences.  Our tutor tries not to get involved with students writing essays, because the skills involved are quite different from those used in teaching mathematics and science.  It’s not that he can’t write himself; but when pressed into service, he finds himself turning the essay into what he would write, rather than drawing out what the student has to say.  And he is very aware that teaching a foreign language requires a different set of skills again.

Which emphasizes the third part of the learning microclimate: the teacher.  Of course each teacher starts out teaching the way he or she learns.  Most adapt to several different styles, especially in tutoring where there is close communication with each student.  But there are limits.  A games-learner can find it hard to set out a straightforward lecture, and a traditional lecturer might feel a bit foolish running a game.

It all sounds terribly difficult, matching the three microclimates of student, teacher and material.  And of course it’s rarely done exactly.  Mostly, especially in classroom teaching, it’s done adequately for the majority, the same way our tutor tolerates the various microclimates he passes through in the course of his commute, with more or less discomfort.

But he gives this advice to his students, when the chance arises: learn how you learn.  Figure out what works best for you.  Then you can steer things toward your own microclimate.