You Will Improve Faster By Teaching Others
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You Will Improve Faster By Teaching Others
“Teaching is the highest form of understanding.”
– Aristotle
Our son Charlie is two years older than Will, and sometimes comes and helps out at our U11 soccer practice. His 11-year-old brother Will finds his brother’s presence annoying at our practice, but the other kids on the team really like it.
Charlie uses his bigger size, speed, and ball-handling skills in a helpful and instructive way. He never tries to score a goal or hog the ball, but instead uses his experience and skill to distribute the ball around the field to the younger players.
But here’s the thing: I’ve been thinking this isn’t just a charitable exercise for Charlie. I think he may get just as much - or more - out of this mentoring opportunity as the younger players. He gets an opportunity to teach, and in the process develops his own skill and confidence.
Often kids who perform below their peers are presented with remedial learning materials that meet their level. And the higher-performing kids are often asked to help teach others. So, for example, if a 6th grade child is doing 4th grade level math, they might be asked to work on 4th grade math until they elevate their skills to meet their classmates. It can be humiliating and discouraging to be identified and asked to do remedial work.
But there are other ways to enhance learning in students – by asking them to help others. And interestingly, sometimes being a tutor to another can be a more effective learning tool than being tutored.
Once upon a time (in 1970), two researchers at Stanford tried something a little different. They took two groups of 6th graders. These are 12-year olds. One half were high-performing readers, the other half low performing readers when compared to their 6th grade peers.
The researchers asked both groups to participate in sessions tutoring kindergarten kids with their reading. So this is 12-year-olds helping out 5-year-olds with their reading.
All kindergartners who received the tutoring learned to read faster than their peers who did not receive tutoring. But, it made almost no difference to the 5-year-old whether their 6th grade tutor was one of the high-performing students or not. Not only that, all kindergartners reported looking forward to their sessions with their sixth grade tutors, and described the reading sessions as fun and enjoyable.
How talented the 12-year-old sixth grader was at reading themselves had almost no effect on how well the 5-year-old kindergartner learned from them. All kindergartners improved equally well by having a 6th grade tutor.
The better 6th grade students were not necessarily better tutors.
But here is the real surprise: While the high-performing sixth graders who participated in the tutoring program did enjoy the program and reported a positive experience, those lower-performing 6th graders who engaged in tutoring showed a much higher increase in social attitude, school attendance, and self-esteem.
In other words, the tutoring exercise had the greatest positive social impact on the lower-performing 6th grade students – precisely those who would be least likely to be chosen as tutors. The lower academic-achieving 6th graders were just as effective as their top-performing peers at being tutors to kindergartners, but they got more out of it.
The lower performing 6th grade kids got the greatest benefit from tutoring.
Think about that if you are a leader, a teacher, a boss. When you think about who "deserves" an opportunity for development, remember often those with less mastery are the ones with the highest benefit when they reach out and take the chance to be a coach or teacher to another.
A word of caution of course…if you have never gone ice-climbing, you probably aren’t suited to teach it. But just because you believe you aren’t talented or expert at something, doesn’t mean you don’t qualify as a coach or tutor to another who is much less experienced.
And when teaching others, you may make the greatest leaps in learning.
what can I teach you? https://www.facebook.com/ValerieRoeMarketing
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