Throw your students for a loop!

Some of the best teaching tools come to us from outside the classroom. For instance, I learned how to start lectures, not from mentors or teaching workshops or from the professors I had in my many years as a student, but rather from taking karate.

A fundamental principle taught in karate is "kuzushi," a Japanese term meaning "to unbalance." In practice, it can become quite complicated, but as a principle it’s intuitive.  When facing opponents who are bigger and stronger than you are, taking away their sense of balance, if even only for a moment, can help you to maneuver them into a position where you can gain an advantage.  This can involve anything from a quick strike to the leg supporting most of their weight to some sort of feint or misdirection to hide your true intentions.

Now, in the classroom, I'm certainly not in combat with students. I am, however, in competition with students' preconceptions, biases, misconceptions, etc. Metaphorically, these are the “bad guys” that have students firmly in their grip, standing in the way of their understanding.  To help bypass those learning obstacles, I try to approach lessons from unexpected angles.  For instance, the first lecture in my biochemistry course was always on the meaning of life (to replicate DNA!).  I introduce my technical writing course with a lecture on epistemology, a theme we return to throughout the semester.  When lecturing about reducing wordiness, I begin with a discussion of class privilege.  My lecture introducing literature reviews asks students to imagine themselves back in 1943, a time before the scientific community understood that DNA was the genetic material. 

In short, I try to begin as many lectures as possible from unexpected angles. This approach helps me not only to engage students in the classroom but, importantly, to help them disengage from many of the attitudes and behaviors that often make students resistant to learning. It was gratifying, then, to learn recently that there's an English term, "engagement triggers", for what I've been doing all along. I can attest that this is extremely effective. Students often say that they enjoy my classes, in part, because they never know what I'm going to do next and that my lectures force them to look at things in new ways. What more could I ask for as an instructor?

Photo by Nando García on Unsplash