It’s More About Balance Than Bravado or Therapy

Some perform for the crowd, some become an in-classroom guidance counselor—neither amounts to effective teaching.

The temptation is to use your magnetism or your charm — perhaps a personal characteristic that you have fine tuned in your profession — to win over your audience. Perhaps it worked with your clients, but it will not, in a classroom setting, sustain the relationships needed to be an effective educator. 

Yes, charm helps to make an initial connection, but being an educator is not a surface-level, cocktail party endeavor. It is also not a therapy session. Neither light banter nor analysis of personal problems is the goal of an educator. You can easily fall sway to the deception that you have entertained your class, delighted them with your tales and triumphs, and that has given them what they need to learn. But you can not count the laughs or the smiles as evidence of a true understanding of the material. Nor can you count a session where all of your students are engaged in conversation — but conversation about personal problems or situations. A complaint session is also not learning.

Falling into either of these traps may make you seem like you are being an effective educator. In fact, you have just fallen victim to the deception that feels so good — “They like me, they really like me.”