Connect with the known.

We learn by connecting to what we already know.

“When landing an airplane, combine pitch and power as you enter the downwind leg adding in a notch of flaps while turning from downwind to base and base to final. Make final adjustments once the runway is in sight and crab the plane in if needed to adjust for wind direction and speed."

Unless you’re at least a student pilot, many of the terms used in the preceding paragraph don’t mean anything to you. You’d probably be hard pressed after reading or hearing that paragraph once to state or explain the content. And yet we often put our students in just such a situation.

The topics we teach are near and dear to us and we often recite the content unaware that to our students, the information exists in a vacuum. What we need to do is connect the new information we’re teaching to something our students have learned previously with us or already know.

As you teach your lessons this week, take a moment to think of how the information you're sharing is being processed by the teens sitting in front of you. Are you connecting to what they already know or are using words that leave them lost and confused?

More on this topic next time...have a great week!