on learning
answering the prompt "What is something you learned recently that you are very excited about?
2 weeks in Los Angeles. Housing, transportation, and dining hall food provided. An hourly salary well above minimum wage.
When my debate coach offered me an assistant teaching job at the summer camp he ran, it seemed like a dream come true. I would earn money, I would be teaching something I understood and loved, and I would be in a relatively familiar environment. I didn’t realize, though, just how much there was to learn about teaching.
In AP Psychology, we learned about Cattell’s theory of intelligence, where he proposes that there are two different types of intelligence–fluid and crystallized. Crystallized intelligence involves stored knowledge and utilizing past learning, while fluid intelligence represents thinking on your feet and using problem-solving skills to overcome new obstacles. While not exactly equivalent, I used these general concepts to categorize hurdles I faced as a teacher–those that could be overcome with preparation and experience, and those that I needed to develop skills to resolve in the moment.
The former primarily involved actually knowing how to teach kids–I had tutored and mentored kids before, and I had a teaching partner, so I wasn’t going in completely blind, but I still had no actual teaching experience. And, I was facing a rowdy class of 20 middle schoolers.
At first, every moment felt like a disaster. Kids didn’t understand debate jargon. They were terrified of public speaking. On the second day, I gave a forty minute lecture on the pros and cons of the Cuban Embargo only for a student to raise his hand when I finished, with a completely innocent expression on his face, and ask politely “Sorry, I’m a little confused. Is Cuba a country?”
The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know what I was saying. It was that I had to learn how to restructure the knowledge that came naturally to me into a digestible format for middle schoolers coming in with no debate experience whatsoever.
Slowly, I learned how to break things down. Presentations became simplified–I started off with basic definitions of terms before launching into any actual content. I asked for students to brainstorm arguments themselves rather than simply explaining everything myself, allowing them to come up with their own ideas. Rather than asking for questions at the very end of every lecture, I asked specific questions intermittently, replacing phrases like “Does everyone understand?” with “What do you think could be a response to this argument?”
I settled into the rhythm I created, and it was really exciting to feel those awkward silences slip away. I thought of each lecture or activity as an act of conversion–converting my knowledge into their knowledge, by translating what I knew into skills and information that was understandable for them.
By the end of camp, I learned the optimal lecture length to get information across without boring the kids (45 minutes), the best drills to do when they were tired (mini debates on absurd topics, like whether we should ban pets), and their favorite game to play during breaks (gartic phone).
As for problems that I categorized as “fluid” or based on instincts and quick problem solving that I needed to learn, those typically always involved the fact that, simply put, kids are LOUD. I realized very quickly that middle schoolers fell into the age group of children that both understood why rules were important but were mischievous enough to break them.
At times, it was an exercise of self restraint to not lose my mind. Kids would be on their phones instead of taking notes. They’d complain every time we did a speaking activity as if they weren’t literally at a camp for public speaking. One girl consistently asked me if I “took bribes” at the start of every debate, leaving a pile of folded cranes on my desk that grew into a paper-bird-mountain over the course of two weeks.
Honestly, the worst part was that I empathized with them a little too much. I knew they got bored quickly. I knew public speaking was scary no matter how many times you practiced. I wanted to be understanding, the “chill teacher” that all the kids loved, but I also didn’t want to be a pushover and let the kids completely run wild.
Learning how to find a comfortable middle ground was really, really hard–I’d feel too strict one moment, and completely powerless the next. I remember asking my old debate coach, “How do you do it?” How do you keep these crazy, infinitely energetic kids in check?
He turned to me, lounging in his chair with his third cup of coffee of the day while scrolling through Twitter as the kids researched their topics. “You have to learn to take it easy. You’re the boss–don’t take their jokes too seriously. They’ll listen to you.”
I learned his small tricks–placing the loudest pair of girls into two different groups for projects, giving the kids a five minute break every time they seemed too restless, not compromising whenever someone would ask for just one more minute of prep time for their speech that would somehow always snowball into five, and then ten. There was really no rulebook to follow or preparation I could do to handle each situation better–I had to learn by doing, in the moment, and gain the students’ respect.
Of course, one of the main critiques of Cattell’s theory–and any sort of psychological theory that divides types of intelligence into discrete categories–is that there will inevitably be examples and instances that don’t fall neatly into any category. My use of fluid and crystallized intelligence in this blog is already vague enough as is, so understandably there were problems weren’t easily categorized as either one.
Just as I struggled with finding the correct type of solution to approach each problem I faced, I also struggled with categorizing myself and actually thinking of myself as a teacher. Just two months freshly graduated from high school and working with fellow coaches that were my teachers for years, I still felt very much like a student. Part of learning how to teach kids inevitably involved learning how to actually be a teacher, and how to feel comfortable in a different position than one I had occupied for my entire life.
By the end of camp, I had overcome much of the obstacles that initially plagued me. My students followed the daily schedule, they understood lectures and asked questions when necessary, and I finally stopped receiving bribes in origami crane form.
In short, I learned so much over the course of two weeks–how to set up an effective classroom curriculum, how to wrangle middle schoolers into paying attention without getting walked over, and how to exist in the liminal space of being both student and teacher.
But most importantly, at least to me, I learned a lot about myself–that I truly love teaching, and working with kids, and that I find joy in the process of taking what I love and sharing it with others. Even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard.