The best lesson I ever taught

Abstract

The best lesson I ever taught was where I said nothing. It was a languid afternoon in a Catholic senior college in the Queensland regional city of Rockhampton, where at the time I was an English and History teacher. As a teacher, you remember some of the lessons you teach, and, about three decades on, this one stands out. The senior college at which I was teaching at the time was based on the ideal of an informal and collegial approach to learning and teaching, appropriate to the situation that there were only senior secondary students at the college. There was an absence of bells - it was assumed that students would be on time. At the end of the day there was a tutorial period, which was designed to provide students with the opportunity to consult with individual teachers on specific subjects. I suspect that the idea of the senior secondary college was the result of the ascendancy of progressive educational theory in the 1970s. There was an underlying assumption that if you gave students more autonomy, then you would create more independent learners. And creating more independent learners is arguably a key aim in education, as the student will then in effect teach him or herself.