Meeting the Needs of the Students

Next week I will be returning to my full time job as a teacher assistant in the Savannah Elementary School computer lab.

In the last 4 years I have been super busy teaching some kind of skills or knowledge base curriculum to many groups of individuals.

Be it essential computer skills to 5th and 6th graders, teaching an after school martial arts classes to a non-profit agency – Wayne County Action Program, or getting my mostly female participants in shape by teaching them cardio kick boxing/functional sports/yoga movement – Fusion Kick Fit, or teaching Mixed Martial Arts to mostly adults in their 20s and this year teaching Judo at Finger Lakes Community College. All in all, I have over 60 hours of instructional teaching times to very diverse audiences every week.

As a professional, I am always trying to reflect on how I can serve my students/clients better by providing the best services/products possible.

One of the things I started embarking on is researching how students learn or more importantly what is their motivation in taking my class. (In some case there is no motivation – as this is course requirement or school mandated class).

This has leaded me to the “Conscious Competence Learning Model”. This model allows trainers/coaches to help facility their students to understand where they are in their learning journey and allows the trainers/coaches to provide a framework to work from.

By using this model I am more conscious of some issues or problems my trainee or students might face.

Case in point:

Teachers and trainers commonly assume trainees to be at stage 2, and focus effort towards achieving stage 3, when often trainees are still at stage 1. The trainer assumes the trainee is aware of the skill existence, nature, relevance, deficiency, and benefit offered from the acquisition of the new skill. Whereas trainees at stage 1 – unconscious incompetence – have none of these things in place, and will not be able to address achieving conscious competence until they’ve become consciously and fully aware of their own incompetence. This is a fundamental reason for the failure of a lot of training and teaching.

If the awareness of skill and deficiency is low or non-existent – i.e., the learner is at the unconscious incompetence stage – the trainee or learner will simply not see the need for learning. It’s essential to establish awareness of a weakness or training need (conscious incompetence) prior to attempting to impart or arrange training or skills necessary to move trainees from stage 2 to 3.

People only respond to training when they are aware of their own need for it, and the personal benefit they will derive from achieving it.

http://www.businessballs.com/consciouscompetencelearningmodel.htm

I hope to blog more about some strategies and methodology that I have come up with over the years to get my martial arts students to obtain new skills, knowledge and physical prowess quickly and efficiently.