Starting now...

They say the best way to learn something is by actually doing it. And so it is with teaching, most especially teaching psychomotor skills that require numerous and various ways of practice, even if it is the most ridiculous of activities to master.

A few days ago, the class was given the task of teaching a classmate one motor skill. It was different than the previous one we did as third year students because it had a twist this time: another classmate is to give feedback in the way the person taught the skill, and yet another is to give feedback to the one who gave feedback. It's very much like a circle thing among three people where the three tasks keep interchanging. In my small group, I taught the "Cup Song" in the movie "Pitch Perfect", a classmate taught the other how to wink in assorted ways, and the latter taught me how to put makeup in a phone app called "Perfect 365". The beauty of the three tasks is they focus on different aspects important to motor learning. My task was more of coordination whereas the wink was focused on modeling. Playing the app, however demanded cognitive processing and eye-hand coordination.

As the activities continued to play on and the roles kept switching, I came to realize that gauging your learner's level in the task is the first most important thing to know. You start building your way up from there. You provide progressions depending on your estimation of his or her capabilities. It wasn't clear enough to me what types of cues were faded sequentially until our lecturer pointed it out--visual, tactile, then verbal. Likewise, it was highlighted that it is crucial for the teacher to fully master the activity before teaching it so the student would not get confused during the instruction. This has direct transference to the practice of the profession, mainly because as physical therapists, our advocacy is movement and hence, teaching movement is an objective. Therefore, knowing the crucial factors to teaching that were mentioned above are expected of us starting now and later when we are interns and full-pledged therapists.

Starting now, we see the importance of teaching. Starting now, we see the value of feedback. And by starting now, we make the step to be outstanding therapists someday.