Let Them Think by Jamie

Let Them Think by Jamie - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

The thing I learned most from my teachers in high school was how not to learn. I’ve had my fair share of “just know this for the test.” Ask me a question over that information now, and a right answer would probably be all luck. I’ve also had the lecturers, the storytellers, and the teachers that couldn’t care less about what they were teaching. I even once had a teacher who thought it was a good idea to record the lessons for us to watch on our own time as the only way for us to learn the information, that didn’t go down very well.

All of these methods group themselves in the not so effective teachers category, but I have also had the teachers who were absolutely amazing. They did more than just help me learn the information I needed to pass the class, but they taught me things for life. How they did this by was teaching me how to think.

This is the one piece of advice I find most important for teachers. Don’t just teach them the information; teach them how to think about the information.
If students had the opportunity to think through the problems and information they were being presented they could use that knowledge for other things in life. The best teacher I had forced us to think for ourselves. They wouldn't tell us exactly how to arrive at the right conclusion, we would have to find right and wrong ways on our own, then build our knowledge from there. Doing this kind of method builds the students ability to work through any problem.

So if you are a teacher, this is the advice I give you. Don't just teach your students the right answer, teach them how you ended up at the right answer. Give them the opportunity to think and think for themselves.