On Teaching as a Tool for Learning
Remembering what you read can often times be the trickiest part of learning something new. What, then, can we do to increase our ability to understand information?
A major reason for writing a series like this is help reinforce the things that I'm trying to learn. One of the many mistakes I've made in this journey is reading or learning for the sake of a short term goal.
While it is a great motivator to check off another book on the reading list or an online course that's been sitting in my Coursera homepage, it should never be the main motivator for learning new things. This creates a desire to finish and get through the material rather than to sit with and absorb the information. It's one thing to memorize and hold onto information for a test or quiz, it's another thing entirely to truly understand a topic and make the learning worthwhile.
As a student, up until college, I had difficulty sitting and studying in any rote fashion. When there was no meaning behind what I was learning, I found it incredibly difficult to engage with the subject I was learning. College only changed that because I stumbled into a subject that I was truly passionate about. Had that not been the case, I likely would never have developed such a love for learning.
Even after college, my route for self education was extremely narrow and only really focused on the same things I was learning about during my undergrad. It wasn't until years later that I found the importance of the broad range of subjects and knowledge, a liberal education, and found the motivation to pursue them.
Though my curiosity began to peak, I still needed a way to study these subjects in a meaningful way. I started to find myself reading and studying just to forget the information as I never made use of it. This is where teaching came in.
One of the reasons I was able to take in information so easily in my undergrad was because of the way I was engaging with it. The college model, especially for the humanities, is to take the information week after week, produce something novel with it, and discuss it with your peers. Using the information, through summary and synthesis, to create new information that continues the larger conversation.
In a way, all of the research, papers, and presentations all amount to teaching the subject you're working with, if even just for yourself.
When I became a teacher, I quickly recognized this perk. I teach grammar and composition. Before I started teaching, if someone had asked me the rules surrounding punctuation and coordinating conjunctions, I would've met the question with a blank, and somewhat embarrassed, stare. Now, after not only having to learn some of the finer points of grammar, but also having to explain them in a way that my student's can understand, I can consider myself to be a much better grammarian than I was before.
The point was made even more clear after recently starting to give extra math help to my students. Although math is considered to be much different than ELA (more on that in a future post), I was able to pick up on certain principles and topics in math not only much faster than normal, but understanding them even better than I did when I was in class learning them as a student.
The secret was teaching.
With Everything I was learning, I framed it in a way to ultimately be understood by others. The gaps in information we take for granted when learning for ourselves are quickly rooted out in order to make our presentation of the information more clear.
When learning a new topic, it is important that we outcomes in mind.
The first batch of books in the science and math category of my **reading list** center around quantum physics. The first few books that I read on this subject meant very little to me because I was reading them for the sake of my Goodreads, with little true understanding in mind. I would finish book after book and be left with nothing but vague notes and a check mark through a box.
Now, for each book that I read or topic I research, I make sure to have a deliverable of some sort. Something that I could give to someone as a mini lesson if they were ever to ask me to explain it to them. I often find it helpful to take the harder concepts that I'm working on and phrase them to myself as if I was explaining it to someone else.
My recommendation is to try out some of the following:
1. Lecture notes
Lecture notes are a helpful tool for taking your notes and annotations and structuring them into something presentable. Compiling notes into a narrative, phrasing them in a way that would help an audience grasp the idea also forces you to clarify the idea for yourself. Our thoughts tend to live in our minds as messy blobs, lecture notes helps to straighten things out. It's important to review these notes periodically as if "prepping" them for your hypothetical upcoming lecture.
As an example, right now I'm reading the book QED: The Strange Theory of light and Matter by Richard Feynman. Because I have no formal training in physics, it's imperative to my understanding that I structure all of my notes as if they were lecture notes and that I was going to have to present this the next day to a room full of students. The book itself is even based off of four lectures that he gave so the writing is already given in a way that only needs simplification.
2. Presentations and Projects
Another helpful way to structure and present what you learn is through creating presentations. Whether for different sections of a book, topics from various sources, or even an entire book.
Sometimes it's helpful to have visual representations of what you're learning rather than just notes or essays. In the same way that some people have an easier time taking in information visually, presenting it can similarly be an effective way to present ideas.
This could even mean making a small presentation in Canva or Google Slides. The more effort you put into your outcome the better. This will ensure that the topics and insights stick. I can recall presentations that I worked on and presented years ago solely because of the effort of putting everything together in one highly visual place.
3. Mini Essays
The third method that I'll cover is writing mini essays. I first came across this idea in a Youtube video from an account called Odysseas. The video does a fantastic job of detailing the benefits of writing mini essays, whether it's to help you learn a topic more deeply, become a better writer and increase your output, or build a bank of ideas to look back on. The same creator also has a video about what his method is for making them.
I've found this method increasingly helpful because it harkens back to the days in school where I would have to write essay after essay, ingraining the techniques and methods into my very ways of thinking. It's not only an easy method for me to slip into but also an effective way to think deeper and elaborate on a topic. The writing app he uses is called Obsidian which I also use and have been loving so far as a tool for writing. I also recommend checking out his channel in general, his ideas about learning and becoming a "renaissance man" fall very closely in line with what I aim to do with this series. If you're even remotely interested in what I'm doing, you'll love this channel.
Key Insights
It's not about the numbers:
While it's a great motivator to check boxes and watch the progress bar on your GoodReads fill up, it about the understanding and insights gained from all of our books and practice.
Teaching fills the gaps:
When you start studying a new topic, it's easy to overlook the gaps in your understanding. While it may seem to make total sense in your head, laying everything out to explain to someone else helps to show where you need to go back and fill in the gaps.
Practice and Experiment
Keeping things fresh by mixing up the ways in which you present your studies is a great way to maintain motivation. It's very easy to hit "walls" once the initial excitement of a new topic or book starts to fade. Keep a variety of methods in rotation in order to overcome that decrease in momentum.
When learning anything it's never a good idea just to trust that you'll remember the things you've studied in a meaningful way. Our brains are designed to hold on to only the information most useful to us. This means actually using the information in some sort of deliverable to make the experience more memorable. This will make the information more accessible in the future as well, which is the whole purpose of learning new things, isn't it?