The more expertise you have in a subject, the more likely you are to try and ride out a drastic change caused by new contrary / negative information.
It's a good thing to trust your experience and wisdom. It makes you more confident and can greatly improve your competence.
The trouble is, it can also make you very attached to the way you've been doing things.
And when the world changes as fast as it does today, this can lead to problems.
I'm certainly guilty of relying more on my experience than listening to the "signs" around me.
When the pandemic hit, I was reluctant to transit my teaching online because:
a) I had spent months prior to the pandemic, producing my programmes.
These were science-based and centered around a lot of guided experiments and activities.
Not that much "lecturing", as they were aimed at students who were less inclined to sit and listen. So, how was I going to let them do the activities while I'm not present to moderate the flow and give guidance?
If this was a "soft skills" programme, I can modify it easily. But a science-based one?
That would take a lot of work and be nowhere nearly as effective or engaging.
My education partners agreed with my assessment.
b) I had spent 15 years as a trainer, all of it face-to-face.
To have to start messing around with lights and cameras and being unable to read my learners' body language properly (because webcams were, and still are, terrible at their job) seemed so much trouble.
I had spent so much time honing my live presentations that I never spent any time learning to do it virtually, and the notion of doing it scared me.
If I'm honest, point (b) was more of a barrier to me than (a). I could choose to invest another few months changing the curriculum (and I kind of did eventually), but the fear of change was so strong, it paralysed my thinking and, consequently, my actions.
And, as the pandemic raged on, the income loss added to the paralysis. Not just for me, but for a lot of trainers I knew and for a lot of education companies as well.
It's a lesson well-learned.
Trying to get to a point where I'm comfortable running online programmes took me time (partly due also to the fact that I'm a bit of laggard when it comes to technology - certainly not an early adopter).
It also took some useful gadgets and apps, which I'll be glad to share information on in a future post.
I'm still nowhere as proficient in online teaching as I am face-to-face, but I'm trying to get there.
To Summarise and Simplify a Message into an Elegant Message Requires Great Skill and Finesse
Summarising is tough. Extracting the main points and leaving everything else, all without the changing the message? That's hard work.
The alternative? Walls of impenetrable text, endless ramblings, confusing information, all seemingly intent on making you space out.
What's even tougher, though, is simplifying.
Not only do you have to emphasise the main points, you have to make them easier to grasp. Often, you have to use a different vocabulary and sentence structure to do this.
Which means that, not only do you need to be good at summary, you have to own a certain finesse and elegance in the language, understand the audience, and be ruthless in your quest for clarity.
These aren't skills you can pick up in a couple of days, hence the rarity of good editors and communicators.
So, the next time you see or hear a well-crafted, polished, easy-to-grasp message, thank these precious individuals.
Even if you only do so in your heart.
Why I Won't Write a Book About Other People's Expertise, Experiences, and/or Stories
Writing a book that is a collection of other people's expertise / experiences / stories doesn't make you an expert.
Oh, it will certainly allow you to be perceived as an expert.
And it makes you a good collator of information, and, if you've been paying attention, a good student of your interviewees.
But you're not really an expert.
Not yet, anyway.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't write a book.
I'm just saying that it may make more sense to write a book about something you are personally good at, even if it's not necessarily a "marketable" or "popular" book.
If I want to learn from a known expert about their expertise, why would I learn it second hand from someone else?
Unless that person has something valuable to add.
Why I Grant Autonomy to My Students, Part Three
[Granting Autonomy, Part Three]
I’m typically a hands-off kind of person. Maybe that’s why I find such appeal in autonomy and freedom of expression.
However, I’ve learned that not everyone is comfortable with so much space. Some of my students need structure and others need assurance and validation.
This makes it my job to be around for them when they feel uncertain or lost.
I’ve had students constantly asking if what they are doing is correct.
After a few times of me telling them, “there is no wrong answer to this”, and there really isn’t because their activities (at least the ones I design) are open-ended and exploratory, they start to get it and start tentatively trying things out on their own.
It may be tempting to skip the reassurances and do the experiment steps for them, but this doesn’t help anyone to learn, least of all me.
Take that time and spend that energy to be present for your students. It’ll pay off in spades, even if you don’t get to see it immediately.