Educational experiences don’t always prioritize learning. Should they?
I can think of lots of situations where pedagogy – teaching – takes a backseat to other priorities. On the football field, sometimes the coach won’t find time to explain and teach ideas, because they are busy focusing on drills and scrimmages and winning the next game. I’ve seen musical ensembles and theatrical productions where the student experiences takes a backseat to producing an excellent product – regardless of how much learning is done along the way.
I believe my job is teaching. If my students aren’t learning the concepts, the underpinnings, the theory behind what they’re doing, I’m failing to prepare them properly for the success after they leave me. If I produce an excellent performance, then they live their life with that memory. If I teach them how it happened and what it took, then they have a lifetime of excellent performances to look forward to.
Indeed, I think that I must be willing to sacrifice some percentage of excellence for the sake of teaching. If I don’t have time to teach, then I need to lower my goals, reduce the scope of the experience, or otherwise reprioritize our work together so that we have time for teaching. Always.