Learning To Teach, Teaching To Learn

Last March 19, we were given a taste of teaching a peer. Though we have experienced something similar before, this was different since the focus is how we teach and give feedback.

We were in groups of three. I was taught how to do the “moon walk” and my friend was able to make me understand it better by decomposing the movement and demonstrating it while I was trying to follow her. It helped that the activity was interesting and explained simply. She was encouraging and corrected me patiently.

I taught our other group mate how to count from one to five in Hokkien which is the language of many Chinese-Filipinos. It isn't easy to learn it based on experience since it is a tonal language, so I said the words over and over while our group mate tried to copy it. He found some of them hard to pronounce and I would correct him by telling him how he said it and how it should be pronounced. By the end of my teaching, he got almost all five words correctly but I realize that I could have chosen less than that and focused on perhaps just three words to master. However, I was very motivated by what Ma'am Mia said about how she saw I was patient the whole time even when my learner kept making mistakes. Patience is crucial to teaching. Not everyone learns with the same pace and we always need to take that into consideration.   

On giving feedback, it is very important to know the activity you are giving feedback on. It will be hard for us to detect areas to improve on or where they did great if we do not know what we are talking about. This shows how as PTs, we need to know what we are teaching for us to properly teach and give feedback to those who will learn from us; and it all starts with learning.