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Secondary

What Eventing Taught Me About Teaching – How Becoming A Student Will Improve Your Pedagogical Practice

Six ways you can become a better teacher by learning and developing a skill

Caroline Sherwood
by Caroline Sherwood
DOWNLOAD A FREE RESOURCE! Year 7 English worksheets – Jungle descriptive writing lesson plan and resources
SecondaryEnglish

If I could offer one piece of advice to teachers, it would be to become a student yourself – regularly. Not only does it teach you about yourself, it gives you a fresh perspective on what classroom life is like for your pupils.

By way of evidence, here are just a few things I’ve learnt from event riding lessons, each of which has contributed to improving my pedagogical practice:

The mindset reality

I teach with a growth mindset approach and wholeheartedly believe in the concept – I know all my students can improve and make progress.

However, when I’m learning I consciously have a fixed mindset, which I find very hard to shift. In other words, I feel exactly what a lot of my students feel. Making this change in my belief system about my own ability and potential, will fuel my future behaviour choices and predict my success in the saddle. And if I can do it – then I can teach it.

Confidence and expectation

I have every confidence in my coach – she will push me so far out of my comfort zone my palms sweat, but always keeps me safe and learning. She creates goals for me that I’m excited by. Do our students have every confidence in us, their teachers? Moreover, my coach’s expectations are everything to me – they are self-fulfilling, just as is the case with teachers’ expectations of pupils.

Keep on reminding

I am aware that my coach asks me to shorten my reins every time I see her, in fact about six or seven times a session. I know that this will improve the horse’s way of going, and I will get the results I desire – yet I still need reminding. I may get frustrated when I have to tell students over and over again to use capital letters, or to vary the start of their sentences – things I say a lot – but those reminders are necessary, for as long as it takes until they aren’t.

When questioning fails

I acknowledge that when I’m asking the horse for counter bend, or I want a few steps of travers and I don’t get it, the horse isn’t being naughty: I haven’t asked the right question, or the horse doesn’t understand me. Horses never lie. I’m not suggesting students never lie, but I do think the responses we get from them depend on the questions we ask.

Positivity works

No one likes being shouted at: adults or children. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget one particular coach, bellowing at me: ‘Caroline, what are you going to do to make your horse look less disgusting?’. I can’t see where this approach would ever work. Human beings, whether big or small, need to feel happy, safe and valued to learn; in fact this improves your ability to be more cognitively alert. A cold, sharp coach (or teacher) will not yield the same results as a supportive, positive one.

Facing the fear

The eventing itself: that scares me. However, when I’m galloping around a cross country course, I’ve got a back protector on, an air jacket – designed to inflate on an unplanned dismount – not to mention a whole team of first aiders with a doctor on site. I am relatively safe.

Back in my classroom, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s words sit proudly on the wall: ‘if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough’. So, what is the back protector and air jacket equivalent for my students? What (or who) will protect them if they fall in pursuit of their dreams; and encourage them to keep reaching for their desires?

Caroline Sherwood teaches English at South Molton Community College in Devon.

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