Coach versus Teacher - Dimensions Analysis
Unlocking learning
Growing up I went to school (primary and secondary; AKA, grade school through high school). If you did too, maybe this applies to you as well.
Sarcasm aside, I bet it applies to one degree or another to 100% of us. And I bet that spectrum is an 80/20 rule for the range “needs between 65% coach and 45% teacher”. Let’s explore what I mean.
Not everyone was like me. I’m just gonna own it: I was smart.
Not only that, again slightly uncomfortable saying this, I was smarter than almost all my teachers.
Let me couch that some. My IQ was probably higher than most of them at the time I was under their tutelage and higher than 95% of them eventually.
Sure, I didn’t know A LOT of stuff they knew from having decades of life experience over me. But most of that was irrelevant, and some of that was unknowledge (downright mistakes, ignorance, innumeracy, and even illiteracy). Thus, the IQ metric, especially in the early years, was a measure of potential rather than pure ability. I really needed someone to help nurture and unlock that IQ as well as channel it properly.
This doesn’t mean I didn’t owe them basic respect and some deference. And it doesn’t mean they weren’t useful.
They could and did still teach me. The mileage varied. Some were great and some were just so-so. And that is just covering the ones who actually taught me something. Many were net negatives against the benchmark like how putting all your retirement investment in a savings account that yields 3% per year for 30 years when inflation is 2% looks positive on even a real (inflation-adjusted basis) but is negative against a very conservative stock and bond portfolio that yielded 6% per year. And back to the point I’m making, the better analogy might be 2% savings yield against 2.5% inflation—negative real yield without the stock+bond comparison.
The job they served early on was mostly babysitter. At that they were also generally mediocre in that they were a lot more like the worst version of Rosalyn and a lot less like Mary Poppins.
Before you misunderstand my point of view, some were terrific at one or both roles. And mostly I blame the system, but that isn’t the point of this post.
The point I want to make is that this was leaving out a crucial third role—one that I in particular could have benefited from immensely: Coach.
What I needed was motivation, encouragement, guardrails, goals, belief, discipline (but not the single way they thought that should work; again, Rosalyn-cum-Nurse Ratched), love, options, and hope.
You say good teachers do [should] have these qualities. I fully agree. But I was left wanting most of the time.
And it wasn’t just me. I had friends across all the various spectrums you might imagine: intelligence(s), learning style, conscientiousness, obedience, attentiveness, you name it. Kids of all abilities and of all limitations (we all have varying degrees of both) need something different than what was and still is typically offered.
As an aside, if you are having trouble reading this where you can’t stop thinking about titles, confused about who can be coach and who must be teacher, and can’t get past questioning how my point might conflict with union pay scales, etc., you are part of the problem. The system has destroyed you. To be clear many of my worst teachers were literal (athletic) coaches forced to (try to) teach.
Sometimes a teacher’s teaching job is the straightforward one of instruction: Here is the lesson, this is the example, this is the assignment, you are right here, you are wrong here, this is how you correct it/please correct and return for another evaluation.
But oftentimes the teacher simply can’t perform this role very well for various reasons: The student won’t actually learn that way or the teacher doesn’t know the material well enough that this even can work, and of course it is often some combination leading to the failure.
The complete role of coach goes beyond these limits. And importantly for me and I suspect many others, a coach can inspire where a teacher in the simple sense outlined above does not.
To be sure there are MANY forms of coach, and one size does not fit all.
The broader lesson is that a coach knows his limitations, but those are irrelevant. Using an athletic coach as an analogy, the athletes at a college and certainly professional level can always outperform the coach in the thing the coach is trying to get them to do. Otherwise, the coach would be the player. This isn’t limited to the pure athletic feat (e.g., run fast, throw/shoot the ball, jump high, etc.). Not just with physical abilities, it is also often true of the mental chore involved in execution. The best chess players in the world can greatly benefit from coaching even though the coaches are significantly worse at chess than the player.
A coach could have gotten through to me in a way my teachers almost never did. Setting aside the much-needed virtues of fostering a loving environment (this starts at the system level but is crucially performed at the teacher level) and other meta-level ideals, a coach could have given me direction and motivation. She could have met me where I was. She could have made my days productive. She could have stopped me from being such an idiot behaviorally and academically—there was a lot of that on my part.
Being smart enough to see through the BS that was and still is today so much of schooling left me at the time frustrated. That channeled into being the class clown and a disruptor par excellence.
Some of what I’m calling for is individualization, but not entirely and definitely not solely. A lot of it is just a different approach. A more humble one on the part of the teacher in many cases. The medical school motto of “see one, do one, teach one” would have been quite helpful.
Letting me fail within the process of learning and not after the presumed learning process was over would have been exceptional. A student’s final grades are really an evaluation of the teacher and should follow them rather than the student.
Back to me personally, yes, I was different than average. BUT SO IS EVERYBODY ELSE. No one is average!
My argument is that different styles and weights are needed for different kids. What we get in most of education including, sadly, private education is simplistic, one-size-fits-all, listen-perform-or-die teaching in the worst sense. We need coaching. I needed it in particular because I could see that the person at the chalkboard just wasn’t that damn smart or admirable or interesting or whatever to get me to plug in. I could also see when they didn’t care in general or for me in particular.
Smarter, more expert teachers is not the solution just like better politicians is not the answer here on planet Earth. The truth is a Fields Medalist wasn’t probably going to help me with math anymore (or less) than did 95% of the math teachers I endured. Some expertise is necessary. No amount of expertise is sufficient.
The way to have taught me would have largely included showing me what I didn’t know in a way that wasn’t demeaning or hollowing but instead was aspirational and challenging. I needed to think of it as a quest with reward at the end. Something I could win. It was almost always just something I could lose.
It is very difficult for a child to actually believe much less live the human capital model of education. It is very easy for a child to understand and attempt to hack the signaling model. “You only cheat yourself by cheating” means something to a human capitalist. It is nearly a complete lie in a world dominated by signaling. And education is almost all signaling—even before the college level where it is most pervasive.
The dimension analysis I think we should explore regarding education is along the coach-teacher spectrum. I know I’ve been mixing the two throughout this, but I think it is the most helpful model. Children need to learn through pure lessons and instruction but they also need everything that is not. They need to themselves believe it is worth learning and that they can learn it. They need someone to guide them on that journey, not just show them the path. They need to find their own paths and their own destinations. They need someone who will enable, encourage, and enhance these journeys. They need a coach.
—Inspired by this post from The Zvi. His education roundups are always must reads. Click the other links to find like thinkers who have inspired me that there is a better way.
