Just ask them

A few semesters ago I was taking an education class and we were asked to think of what both students and teachers want from their classroom.

My answer was “to be teaching something they enjoy and learning about something they enjoy.” Teachers want to be teaching things they enjoy teaching and students want to enjoy learning about things they enjoy learning about.

So my professor followed up with me, “How do you figure out what they want to learn about?”

I’d never thought of an answer to this question so I answered, “Well I don’t know. That’s the difficult part of it.”

And she said, “I don’t mean this as a ‘gotcha’, but you could just ask them.”

And I love thinking of that because sometimes I get so caught up in trying to “solve” a problem with a fancy “solution”, when there’s a very simple answer that I could use instead.

Just ask them.

Not all solutions need to be complicated.

ISJ