Teaching Tai Chi Effectively - the dark side by Pat Lawson

Yes, I went over to the Dark Side. I reentered my original field of education in my late middle ages as a MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER. I suspect I got the job because during my interview I answered my principal's question about my long absence from public school teaching by saying that I had done other kinds of teaching and it all came down to "what do I want them to know, how do I break it into pieces, how will I check and re-teach if necessary." Sounds simple.
That first year I was no more than two weeks into the school year when I commented to a friend "It's a good thing I do tai chi." I knew tai chi was going to help me be a better teacher. What I did not realize then was that getting back into the rudimentary fundamentals of teaching kids with undeveloped brains and raging hormones was also going to help me become a better tai chi teacher.
#1 Break it into pieces
First thing that I began to realize, in the course of updating my formal background in teaching reading and language arts, was how much the vocabulary had grown and expanded. We do not simply instruct, guide or reinforce. We scaffold, develop schema, and are armed with graphic organizers. To my chagrin, I had to first find out what all these terms meant. 60 credits later, I found out that these were just new terms applied to gradually building a strong base of knowledge, context and background, and charting. I don't always agree, because I am old fashioned enough to believe that if I can get the kids to love reading the rest will follow. But here's the most important new term I will throw out at you, and I'm sure you are reading it in the papers: data driven instruction. We must teach according to what data has proven to be successful. In tai chi for health, we have sound medical studies that back the programs—don't reinvent or alter them because you feel a little bored. The program works.
I suddenly had an AHA! in tai chi class one day—I was talking about rooting and realized it must sound like a foreign concept to some of my students. But like my teenagers, they do not want to appear stupid in front of the class so they are not going to stop me and ask. NOW scaffolding makes more sense. I have to build up the knowledge piece by piece until the chunk is complete. Put first things first. STEPWISE PROGRESSIVE TEACHING METHOD. Teach in pieces and build. And remember—Rome wasn't built in a day. When you reach a high level of proficiency in something, it can be hard to remember what it is like for beginners. That is why we have an emphasis on DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION. I have mixed levels of experience and ability in my classes. It is challenging, but necessary, to try to group the students so that no one is bored AND no one is frustrated. Big words for what we see in our classes. Which brings me to number 2.
for the rest of this talk please go to www.taichiforhealthinstitute.org and click newsletter, August 2011.

Category:

Education

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• tai chi for health
• teaching tai chi
• teaching effectively
• Dr Paul Lam
• Pat Lawson
• tai chi