Part 1: Transformational vs Transactional Teaching

Last week, I traveled to Bethel University in St. Paul Minnesota for day long workshop to get certified as a head coach.

I am a co-head coach for the baseball team at Dassel Cokato High School, and have been for a number of years. The state of Minnesota has decided that you must have a certificate for the job. I'm fully qualified for the job, actually had a coaching license from graduate work, but no one seemed to care and that lapsed a decade or so ago.....

You know how it is sometimes, when the directive comes down from above. You "have" to do something. So it was for this endeavor.

Here is where the good stuff shows up.

Dr. Jeff Duke 3D-Coaching

The message from the day was all about building relationships with people that just happen to be athletes under your direction. Dr. Jeff Duke spoke of the above, follow the link to his presentation. Most of us in the coaching profession are in tune with the bottom two parts of the pyramid. We can train the body with repetition to field a ground ball and throw strikes. We can help the athletes to focus and be motivated.

Few of us get to the top: where body, mind and spirit fuse to make the athlete whole.

A great deal of the day was about looking at coaching styles. I started thinking about teaching styles and how I relate with students. Briefly, the two extremes of coaching style would be the transactional coach. That would be a coach in control of everything. Here is an example. The transformational coach makes connections with athletes and tries to get to the spirit and soul of the athlete.

Sitting and listening to the day's worth of coaching instruction made me think about my classroom and where am I on that axis of teaching. A transactional teacher is one who is total control of what happens in the classroom. It is all about the process of what goes on and control. The key word is process: it is about the doing of instruction. A transformational teacher is about the being of instruction. The classroom is about the relationships established through conversation and modeling.

I want to be a transformational teacher. The classroom should not be about the curriculum, it should be about the relationship with the learner. And shouldn't we be the head servant/learner in our classroom. This is about leadership for our students and we must lead in learning. Science classrooms, whether biology, chemistry, physics......whatever class has the same curriculum: the same.

What is different is you or I. How are we going to be the difference for the learners? We have to be the difference.

Our students need to see our deep spirit of learning.

For us to be transformational teachers, think about these:

1. Be a thermostat. If we start out hot for the content and enthusiastic, our students will see that deep spirit of learning on the outside of us. What drove us to our field of study? I love the term, field of study.....a wide open, not finite corner of the planet. The field of biology is an open space deserving of exploring! Whatever your field of study, it is the same for you as well. Demonstrate that deep spirit that drew you to the subject. Don't be a thermometer, be a thermostat.
2. Connect: connect with your students. Find out what they are interested in. They learn things outside of your classroom, without your guidance. Tie into that somehow. We want self-directed learners, start connecting with them. Then connect with the colleagues in your department, then connect with the colleagues in your building, then connect to the world. Find ways to dialogue with students and other professionals. Don't work in isolation.
3. Get creative in your teaching. Get entrepreneurial in the classroom and take some risks.
4. Find a way to make this sustainable change for your classroom. You can't do this by yourself. Build a team of support that can keep you fresh and on an even track. Our buildings are full of staff that can and will support us. We need to find those people and ask for help. Then we need to find the people who are not like that and be a leader for them to lead them to transformational teaching.

Our students deserve to see our spirit and soul for learning. Get into the being of the subject you teach and passed the doing of just teaching it.

If we capture the heart and soul of our student/learners there will be change in our classroom for the better.

• learners will be more attentive
• learners will work harder
• learners will be adaptable to their future
• learners will be more creative and insightful
• learners will have a deeper relationship with us