Changing Teachers to Tutors/Mentors/Learning Facilitators From One-To-Many to One-To-One Transformation
by Merrill L. Tew
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The intent of this recommendation is an interim transition, for those who have not yet progressed as far as un-schoolers, from classroom or lecture hall setting to a studio, one-on-one learning facilitation setting.
The question "How do teachers transform themselves into mentors?" warrants some preliminary definitions. A teacher can be a mentor, according to the definition of mentor as a wise and trusted friend, based on the mythological loyal friend and advisor of Odysseus, and teacher of his son, Telemachus. As used in this recommendation, the word "tutor" is more appropriate: "a teacher who gives individual instruction to a student." (Webster) But this term, although it individualizes, does not convey what the phrase "learning facilitator" conveys, one who makes learning easy, desirable.
A simple answer to "How do teachers transform themselves into mentors?" is, "Pay them!" When teachers with appropriate disposition and personality are paid to be learning facilitating mentors/tutors, they are motivated to conform to necessary logistic adjustments. Public tax-supported funding presumes acceptance of the traditional values and attendant strictures of the public school system, antithetical to freedom of learning advocated by educational reform. A study is warranted in examining funding for one-on-one learning facilitation. Current public funding is based upon the specious traditional practice of "selling" of grades, credits and diplomas, (the practice which encourages seat warming and day-care) another of the education Establishment's unnecessary raisons d'etre.
Results of recent attempts to increase academic achievement by decreasing class size have suggested that no significant difference is observed unless class size is less than 15 students. Advocates of educational reform recognize that small class size is better than the traditional and unwieldy, wherein little learning takes place, but NO class is better than a small class. Restructuring for individualization can make this happen. A teacher functioning as a private learning facilitator can spend individual time with each of 15, 20 or 25 or more students an hour each week or as the need arises, and be more effective than the present system allows. Learner/facilitator meetings need not necessarily be periodic but can be arranged only when the learner desires clarification of a concept or wishes to have skill development progress assessed. Those traditionalists who preach achievement standards can continue, until they are converted, to schedule meetings as necessary when the learner is below grade level.
A new format for education needs to be adopted. Students, more appropriately referred to as tutees, should be allowed to gain the bulk of their education at home and visit with teachers, more appropriately referred to as learning facilitators, tutors, mentors, functioning as supportive specialist consultants, on a one-on-one basis, either by telephone, electronic mail or in the facilitator's office or tutee's home, when clarification of a concept is necessary. The teacher's role must change from one of lecturer, recreational supervisor, baby-sitter and disciplinarian to one of educational process planner and diagnostician, consultant, advisor, mentor, and designer of tutorial packages.
Schools as presently structured, for the most part, have been described as a waste of students' time, a waste of teachers' energy and a waste of taxpayers' money. An example of such was reported in the Hewitt Research Foundation September/October 1987 Family Report, which cited a research report by Richard Rossmiller of the University of Wisconsin. He provides statistical evidence that "a typical public school student spends more of his school years in non-instructional activities than in actual classroom instruction." There are 36 30-hour weeks for 1080 hours in a typical school year. Of this, the following lists non-instructional time and the reasons for it: --
lunch, recess, attendance-taking and between class breaks. absenteeism. bad weather, teacher strikes and conferences. materials' distribution, discipline and answering questions. day-dreaming. TOTAL wasted hours, 66% of 1080 scheduled hours' time.
Students consequently receive instruction during only approximately one-third of the time spent in school. This provides further evidence that taxpayers are funding day-care more than education. This waste of time may contribute to the development of poor work habits that the students will eventually take into their vocational employment.
Media expert Marshall McLuhan quipped that schools are more institutions of detention than of attention (or more institutions of confinement than refinement). An advocate of un-schooling since displayed a bumper sticker, "School are Tools of Fools" because of schools' emphasis on crowd-control at the expense of learning, the ostensible primary purpose of schools.
The most daunting task of how teachers will transform themselves into mentors, tutors, facilitators of learning, is developing a different self-image than their own experience, tradition and teacher college training have conditioned in them. They must imagine themselves functioning in spaces much smaller than classrooms and relinquish their Thespian proclivities. And the public who expect day-care as a benefit will have to understand that this un-written primary purpose of schools has to change. Even educational progressives have a difficult time conceiving a different image of schools. For example, a participant on the IBM/University of Washington sponsored ISAAC (Interactive System for Advanced Academic Computing[?]) BBS in the late 1980's considered day-care to be an appropriate function of schools, and the following note was written recently by an officer of an educationally progressive organization: . . . . Your idea of individualizing is great! But not as far as I can see in public schools. Unions will never relinquish their hold. Best we try to use methods that work more effectively in a classroom setting. The type of teachers who love their students and consequently facilitate learning are the ones who are not comfortable as disciplinarians. Enduring learning takes place in an atmosphere of mutual acceptance and freedom from fear, as loving parents give in the home, which provides an environment much more conducive to learning than the traditional school. Each child discovers his own best way to learn, and the home is usually the most desirable environment. "It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. . . . It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty."
- - - - - Albert EinsteinThe most effective teacher is one who cares, who provides what the medical profession used to refer to as "TLC," tender loving care. A few years ago a journalist was doing research for an article on effective teaching and interviewed several successful adults in a particular town who all remembered the same first grade teacher. When the journalist interviewed that former first grade teacher and asked what procedures and methods she used to make her teaching so effective as to have had such an impact on so many successful adults, she responded that she did not knowingly use any special methods--she did not think she was that organized--but mentioned, almost as an after-thought, "I sure did love those kids."
An atmosphere of tolerance, acceptance, love, reassurance and respect is most conducive to learning. Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect this in the traditional school. Although it doesn't exist in all homes, it is more probably found there than in the school. . . If you want bright kids, you should cuddle them a lot as babies because that increases the number of neural connections produced in the brain.
- - - - Steven Rose, Open University -- England.
. . The typical developmental pattern [of genius] includes: . . a high degree of attention focused upon the child by parents and other adults, expressed in . . . usually abundant love; - -
- - Harold McCurdy for SMITHSONIAN
A student does not care how much I know if he does not know how much I care.
- - - - - unknown source.Presuming there are progressive teachers who recognize the value of individualizing learning through their metamorphosis into tutors, there are logistical ways that this can be done. Performing musicians obtain their training in a one-on-one relationship with a tutor, periodically, in a studio, not classroom. That system of private instruction also works for any other subject and fits into the concept of a life-long learning center or an "educational clinic," if you will. With teachers -- transformed into mentors -- committed to their profession 6 hours a day 5 days a week, each can accommodate up to 25 students -- a presumed average class size -- on a private, individual basis an hour each week and have 5 free, flexible hours. Although each student (tutee) is engaged with a different teacher (learning facilitator) an hour each (six subjects) for only 6 hours a week, this individualized system would increase learning manifold. Traditionalists may argue, "What do the students do the other 24 hours a week that they are supposed to be in class?" They can be reading, watching educational videos, discussing concepts with other students, interacting with computer tutorials, engaging in research on the Internet, practicing, gaining real life experiences, hiking, exploring nature, or visiting neighborhoods and industry.
"What, a university in the city?
Why, the city IS the university."
-----Aristotle
Under whose supervision will these activities take place? Their own, their parents' or a para-professional's. (And that can save taxpayers' money!) With electronic mail and the Internet, many students (tutees) can and do obtain necessary clarification of a concept without being in the teacher's (tutor's) presence. An additional benefit of the Internet and listserv forums is the opportunity participants have of learning from each other; participants have the opposite of a 25-to-one student/teacher ratio: they have, in effect, a one student to 25 or 50 or 300 or 1000 teachers (Whoops; learning facilitators)!!! That's better than one-on-one. The traditional concepts of "school" and "teacher" no longer exist with this system.
The past record of the traditional educational establishment suggests that it is not adaptable. Indeed, the educational institution may become officially recognized as what it has been for many years, a museum. Traditional schools will eventually disappear due to their inability to adapt.
Granted, there are dysfunctional homes in which learning is not facilitated. Perhaps children from such have no better alternative than the traditional public school. Fortunately, alternative learning enclaves are proliferating, which emphasizes the beauty of school choice from unschooled home through relaxed Summerhillian "free" schools to strict military academies, wherein learners can find their own best learning environments conducive to their own learning styles. A learner can now choose, with proper guidance, the setting which best suits his or her temperament. Those administrators on whom children depend must understand that school, previously likened to a one-size-fits-all article of clothing, can now provide, if they will, the procedures best suited to each individual student. Indeed, when a learner has a love of learning, one can learn anywhere, as emphasized so poignantly in the Friday, December 17th, 1999 ABC News "20/20" report (ABCNEWS.com : 20/20: From Homeless to Harvard) about Liz Murray, the homeless daughter of drug addicts who became self-educated enough to win a scholarship to Harvard (class of 2004) and a job with the New York Times. Too often, however, unpleasant experiences with coercive school procedures and bellicose teacher personalities not only ruin a child's desire to learn, they thwart and reduce the ability to learn. (See Dorothy & Raymond Moore's BETTER LATE THAN EARLY, SCHOOL CAN WAIT and Thomas Armstrong's IN THEIR OWN WAY.) Merrill L. Tew -- mltew@pe.net -- http://www.pe.net/~mltew.
One-on-one instruction is the ideal form of education. . . There is no credible study which indicates that a teaching certificate says anything concerning a person's ability to teach others.
- - Dr. Donald Ericson, UCLA Graduate School of Education.* * * * *
© Copyright 2000. Merrill L. Tew - All Rights Reserved.
mltew@pe.net
http://www.pe.net/~mltew