Authority – Why the best educators teach like Attenborough
Teachers must be specialists, but also passionate advocates, says John Lawson – because if you don’t love your subject, why should your students?
- by John Lawson
For A-grade teachers, some knowledge is useful to know and some is essential.
Allow me to share one such essential that most teachers I meet don’t seem aware of. It came from an epiphany I wish had transpired years earlier, as it stirred my soul and instantly reshaped my pedagogical philosophy from then on.
Love, passion, power and authority
It’s an astute insight that I owe to Parker J Palmer, whose marvellous book The Courage to Teach is a must-read. In it, Palmer underlines the crucial importance of love, passion, power and authority, and explains how all are crucial areas that will result in teachers either thriving or floundering.
The insight is this: students learn best from those who teach with infectious enthusiasm and authority.
Forceful, not forced
Authority is what makes our teaching ultimately land. It stems from the essence of who we are, what we value and the hard-earned knowledge we dare to share.
Take Sir David Attenborough, for example. What makes him such an outstanding teacher isn’t just supreme mastery of his material, but the fact that he’s also overflowing with gentle and infectious passion.
His carefully crafted and confidently delivered ‘lesson plans’ are his greatest asset. He loves sharing secrets about a world that he treasures. Attenborough purrs over a mighty lion’s hunting prowess and power, but is also audibly delighted when their gazelle prey succeed in escaping the menu.
It’s a remarkable skill – being able to marvel at nature’s teleological powers of provision, while simultaneously questioning its deontological brutality. His lessons are forceful, but never forced. However noble a subject might be, forcing it down an audience’s throat demonstrates a lack of respect and will only induce resistance. We can woo, but we may not ravish!
Attenborough invites us into his world in the manner of someone who believes we’ll be just as captivated by its sights and sounds as he is. Confidence is attractive and reassuring. We usually can’t see them, but we can almost picture his eyes sparkling over the course of narration. The subtext of his every utterance may as well be, ‘Come closer, this is incredible.’
Authentic power
A distinctive hallmark of stellar teachers is that they rarely need to enforce many rules. When students enjoy what we have to share, they’ll almost intuitively disavow unacceptable conduct.
Similarly, viewers aren’t compelled to watch Planet Earth III; we make space for it, and sit back to enjoy a compelling spectacle. Sir David merely shows up on time with an engaging lesson plan that he proceeds to present before millions of attentive students (or viewers).
Authentic power over an audience will come from a speaker’s authority, which starts in the heart and mind before working its way out to other hearts and minds.
We don’t have to be experts to know when we’re in the presence of an authoritative speaker. They will be sure of themselves without being cocksure. Attenborough has spent a lifetime immersing himself in a reverential study of the natural world. Teachers need to do the same. If we aren’t in love with, and passionate about our subjects, why should anyone else be?
Lives transformed
Power is an external force that works from the outside in. Every teacher is granted some of this power, but teens can still make disruptive fireworks out of it, if that’s all we have to offer. Threats and sanctions may briefly silence children and create frangible compliance, but these are poor substitutes for impassioned apologetics.
The moment we give off the merest hint of compulsion, spite or autocracy, our students will instantly switch off or become agitated. Authoritarians resist the call to service that all teachers must honour.
Teenagers enjoy the company of those teachers who can unleash the power of stories over arid theory. When we genuinely care about our students’ wellbeing, they’ll pick up on that and reciprocate with the respect we deserve in turn. They will listen, and through cultivating those listening skills, their lives will be transformed.
Attenborough doesn’t appeal to everyone, of course (The late comedian Victor Lewis-Smith once cruelly called him ‘Attenbore, the BBC’s cure for insomnia’), but then nor does any teacher. I can’t imagine such barbs have ever disturbed Sir David’s sleep, since his authority doesn’t depend on a craving for universal approval. He knows, as do all great teachers, that it’s impossible to please everyone.
John Lawson is a former secondary teacher, now serving as a foundation governor while running a tutoring service, and author of the book The Successful (Less Stressful) Student (Outskirts Press, £11.95); find out more at prep4successnow.wordpress.com or follow @johninpompano
