# Your teacher can't help you... @mikeandmatty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmhBLmZWhPM

[00:00] what can teachers or professors do to make it easier for students to take notes during class?
[00:04] the problem I think is that in a lot of situations professors at University are not really teachers.
[00:12] they don't really have educational experience and they're kind of just recruited by the university because they get funding for their research and then in exchange they have to do these lectures.
[00:21] so they're not necessarily like particularly invested in being better as an educator and any unique student will like know that and you can attest to that.
[00:26] it's like you clearly don't want to be here I don't want to be here why are we all here?
[00:31] and the reason that everyone is there is because you get funding for your research.
[00:34] in schools it's a different situation you know the teachers are usually like you know want the best for their students.
[00:38] the problem in schools that teach us like overwork to the extreme.
[00:41] teachers are the doctors of the educational Workforce you know.
[00:45] so like there's a lot of kind of like Workforce exploitation and a lot of issues you know in terms of like massive workload relative to what's in their job description.
[00:53] so there's not really much that's even possible for teachers to do.
[00:57] first of all your teacher or your professor is never going to deliver
[01:01] information that's perfect for you.
[01:02] unless it's a one-on-one situation and they've spent a long time thinking about you and the way you learn and your cognitive capacities and all that stuff.
[01:08] which is just unrealistic and even then the argument is that well really that's not going to be the case every time you learn for the rest of your life so you really need to learn how to deal with these imperfect scenarios.
[01:18] so I'm a big proponent of this thing called learn a self-regulation which is basically your ability and skill at overriding all these kind of external variables.
[01:28] Bad Teacher not interested in the subject resources overwhelming they're talking too fast it's all good you've got the skills to manage that.
[01:33] so I'm a really big proponent I think purely from a practical sense that's what should happen because schools and institutions they're not going to change for years in the right way.
[01:41] you're not going to be like I'm going to take a seven years of Gap until the institution has changed in such a way that I'm able to learn you know cognitively optimized way.
[01:48] so that's the first thing I think it's kind of irrelevant to think about the teacher or the professor changing.
[01:56] if it was relevant though what could they do.
[01:58] there is a lot of Burden right now on Educators to try to cater to the
[02:02] learning styles which is a debunked myth.
[02:05] of each individual learner and so now you've got this educator that's trying to deliver optimal learning for like a group of 20 to a thousand students and that places a lot of stress and responsibility on the educator and their lesson planning and their delivery that's not going to be sustainable and so I think teachers and Educators they should focus on yes deliver the information but spend less time on really optimizing the delivery of the information and spend a little bit more time on helping students navigate that difficulty navigate their curiosity and bring these things together so all the things that I've been talking about right now in terms of grouping information looking for relationships these are things that the learner has to do I think a teacher is in a great position to facilitate that to ask questions that don't say what relationship are you thinking of but rather how are you trying to think of that relationship right it's not about did you get the right answer did you think about it in the right way well did you group it in this way it's how are
[03:03] you trying to group it what thought process are you engaging in to navigate this information
[03:09] there's a lot of information here it's overwhelming what are you trying to do to manage that
[03:16] but that would actually require a complete rework of how teachers are trained which we're many years away from
[03:20] therefore going back to point number one Learners just need to self-regulate because it's an imperfect World
[03:25] everyone's trying their best in their own way but it's it's never going to match up and mesh perfectly
[03:28] and if you sort of externalize it and leave it for someone else you're just gonna suffer in the meantime
[03:35] that's a really sad answer coming from you an expert who's been doing this for so many years
[03:43] it's actually a a pretty um difficult problem to solve I think it's a systems are big you know like education is massive trying to move that massive beast is just it's just not realistic
[03:52] uh-huh you do teach thousands of students around the world do you teach teachers I never asked you that before
[04:01] yeah um I do
[04:04] but not many and we've started getting some interest from some institutions like universities in the U.S and a couple in in Europe that are a little bit more Progressive and so they're actually really wanting to but the thing with institutions and schools and things is that first of all there's a lot of red tape there's a lot of like stages that need to go through it's pretty common for example a teacher to be like really interested in learning this but they either can't get it past their senior leadership team in some cases the senior leadership team are like not really teachers so they don't really get it in some cases even if they do get it it's just hard to fit into their professional development programs like they're already overworked and now we're asking them to like do even more work to learn in like an entirely new set of skills it's just it's too much so what we've had more interest from is uh industry trainers like companies and corporates that need to train their staff and employees like new skills job upskilling those there's actually a commercial capitalistic Advantage because you're able to teach people skills they're retaining information you're able to essentially up skill your staff faster make them more profitable
[05:05] and you're able to retain stuff for longer so we've actually had a lot more interest from that sector because they're like financially incentivized to be like competitively amazing at learning.
[05:14] but in schools and with teachers it's very very slow moving and although there's a lot of conceptual interest by teachers a lot of them just simply don't have the time or the school doesn't facilitate it.
[05:25] hmm it's it's a shame and very interesting.
[05:29] um sorry to go off topic there though but do you have any remarks about note-taking that you wanted to cover or that we didn't talk about.
[05:38] the only thing that I want to say is like it is not going to be a process that is comfortable necessarily.
[05:45] you're going to have to do some problem solving you know it's not going to be your same old habit so it's there's going to be a bit of discomfort there.
[05:52] you it's going to be a little bit more confusing and it just has to be expected if you expect it to be like a walk in the park to learn these skills I think it's just not a right expectation to go into because it's a life-changing skill to learn effectively.
[06:02] it pays itself over you know 100 fold easily yeah but the process of
[06:08] Creating that change is not something that's like boom boom boom I'm done.
[06:11] I spent one evening giving it a go and then now I'm able to do it straight away.
[06:15] But the mindset is that every week that you're continuing to work on this, you might be getting a little bit better.
[06:21] You know, you're getting three, four, five percent better every single week, right?
[06:24] And your goal maybe to be 80, 90, 400 better than you are now, that's great.
[06:27] That's a great go to have, but don't let the top discourage you from getting started.
[06:34] You know, the thing like I really like to give is like one that's often give for people that start getting into like working out and gymming.
[06:39] You know, they'll say like, oh, I don't want to like go to the gym because like I don't want to end up being like massively, you know, like way too buff.
[06:45] Which is kind of like saying like, I don't want to learn to drive because I don't want to like accidentally become like a NASCAR racer.
[06:49] You know, so even if you want to become the NASCAR racer, if right now you're sort of just like just learn to put yourself in reverse, you don't really have to concern yourself with that.
[07:02] All you need to think about is how can I get one step better than where I was before?
[07:06] Which in some cases a lot more motivating than thinking how can I get.
[07:10] one step closer to that result because it allows you to see relative progress.
[07:15] I get a lot of Instagram uh messages sent through to me saying you know can you like rate whatever work that I'm doing.
[07:22] and I I usually don't really like rate people's work because I just it's just too time consuming but this was one person that was uh like they're actually on my course and they're on my program.
[07:30] so I try to give them a little bit more time and then they sent me something and say well how would you rate out of 10.
[07:35] and what I asked them was what's 10 is 10 relative to how good I expect you to be at your stage and your level of development or as 10 the best it could possibly be for you and your full potential in life.
[07:47] and they were like the best it could possibly be and I was like 0.5 and they're like great and now I feel like crap.
[07:52] so however they were like a seven out of ten relative to where they were.
[07:58] so if you're starting from like not really much knowledge about how to learn effectively and it's just a few tips or tricks that you've played here and there and you're starting this journey for the first time realistically you're like only using a fraction of your full potential which is really
[08:11] exciting which is really exciting.
[08:12] However if your full potential is 10 out of 10 then you're going to be making incremental progress towards that.
[08:18] Whereas compared to a week before if you say a week before a zero out of ten then a week later you might be two out of ten.
[08:24] And a week after that you might be four out of ten.
[08:25] A week later you might be seven out of ten like you're actually making relatively massive gains every single week that you're applying this.
[08:33] And you just continue you to make those massive gains again and again and again and again and again and eventually you will reach that full potential.
[08:40] So I think it's just there's a bit of a mindset game as well.
[08:41] Yeah mind certain having the systems in place to measure your growth.
[08:45] Yeah all said man well said.
[08:57] [Music]