Another common theme in our conversations and work with teachers is how directive to be in your teaching when your goal is to be “learner-centered”.  In my opinion, learner-centered teaching, along with the parallel process, “patient-centered care”, are misnomers. 

While it is true – and in fact essential – to the work to meet the learner (or patient) where they are, rather than with your own agenda or program, it is also true that there is a critical role for your expertise as a teacher (or clinician) during those encounters.  What are the effective and responsible ways to use your “teacher power”?  My approach has been to think about the metaphor of a guide. 

When climbing Mt. Rainier, or fishing in a new river, or exploring a new city, what you want and need is a guide.  The best guides do not just give you a “spiel”, but rather they take time to find out what your goals are for your adventure, and assess what skills you are bringing into the situation.  The Mt. Rainier climbing guide would be irresponsible if she didn’t have intimate knowledge of the clients’ capacities.  And yet, she does not allow the new climbers to choose the route up the mountain, or reject the 2am start time (when you must start climbing to minimize crevasse risk).  The guide uses her expertise to tailor the climb to meet her clients needs, goals, and strengths, and will send people back if she assesses they are not going to be able to make it – regardless of their initial goal to get to the peak. 

In a very similar way, a teacher working with a learner finds out what the learner’s goals are in a given learning encounter, what he hopes to accomplish, where he is challenged, and also assesses his skill level to tailor the learning experience to the appropriate level.  If the learner heads off in the wrong direction, the teacher (as guide) intervenes and can redirect onto the safer path.  If the learner resists certain learning directions, the teacher (as guide) can be transparent about why we do things and hold fast to the rules and structure that are there for good reason. 

Finding this dance between exploring with the learner and guiding them toward the experiences that will best serve them takes active work and responsible use of power and direction.  The best teachers can be deeply directive (interrupt, reframe, rephrase, recommend) and are using their direction in service to the learning experience and are not driven by agenda or ego.  In what ways can you own and aim your teacher power? 

Conversational Credit: Bob Arnold, Tony Back, James Tulsky, Holly Yang and other fabulous clinician-teachers within the Vitaltalk network. Check out @vitaltalk #pallitalk for more.

It has been a long debate in behavior change to ask whether the best strategy is to focus on behaviors or on more conceptual shifts.   We are here deep into a course, teaching communication and facilitation skills to clinicians, experimenting with this question.

Aristotle had something right when he said (so they say) that the actions make the character.  I have always taken this to mean that if there is something or someone you aspire to become, then take small action steps each day to simply “act as if” you are that person or have that way of being.  Over time, through walking the walk, you will in fact become that person to which you aspire.  Simple examples:

• If you want to become a gracious person, start saying thank you, express gratitude each day, and look for opportunities to do something for someone else. 
• If you want to become an athlete, do something active each day. 
• If you want to have meaningful therapeutic relationships, take a pause in each encounter to witness and acknowledge – verbally or nonverbally – the human being that sits before you. 
• And so forth.

All of these examples make sense to me, to a point.  And yet, I think the rote doing of something needs to be coupled with some other kind of reflective practice to fully realize the potential behavior change and identity shift.  You have to notice what happens to you when you make yourself express gratitude, or workout regularly, or recognize the fellow human in the clinic room with you.  You have to notice that something is shifting about the quality of the experience you are having.  You may notice that you are becoming different, that things come more naturally to you in this new practice, new way of being.  To fully integrate this, thinking deeply about who you are becoming, and why it matters, will help embrace and deepen the changes you have triggered through the action steps you take.  What is your next step? 

Conversational Credit: Anthony Back, Bob Arnold, James Tulsky, Holly Yang, and the other good folks of the Vitaltalk network.