Testing the Techniques

This morning I spoke at a Christian, residential drug & alcohol rehab facility. I used this as my first opportunity to try out the Whole Person/Whole Brain Teaching techniques in a group. With thirteen men present, one had to pair up with my wife Laura.

I started by introducing them to the "Class!/Yes!" and "Teach!/Okay!" responses. They got this very well and needed only a little practice. I also taught them a response that I made up for whenever I quoted Scripture: "Hear the Word of the Lord/Speak, Lord, your servant hears." (More on this in another post)

Some of the men have come from Christian backgrounds, while others have not. In either case, I wanted to give them something that would help them when they left the home to rejoin society. Therefore, I spoke to them about the place of daily prayer and Bible reading in their walk with God.

Here's the simple outline, without all the Whole Person techniques:

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Discipleship: Prayer, Bible Reading & Obedience

1) To be a disciple you must not only believe, but follow and obey Jesus.

Matthew 9:9 - As Jesus passed by from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax collection office. He said to him, "Follow me." He got up and followed him.

Matthew 28:19-20 - Go and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things, whatever I commanded you. And, behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the world. Amen.

2) The best way to follow and obey is to pray and read your Bible every day.

I Thessalonians 5:17 - Pray without stopping.

John 5:39 - In this scripture, Jesus says, Search the Scriptures . . . these are they which testify of Me.

3) You also need to ask questions about what you read that will help you see how God wants you to change the way you think and the way you live.

i) What does this passage tell me about the character of God?

ii) Does this passage teach me a good thing to imitate? Does it teach me a bad thing to avoid?

iii) If I really believe this passage is God's truth, how should my life change?

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On the way home, Laura and I evaluated this new -- or at least, new to us -- method.

1. On the minus side, some of the men who had been there a only few days still had to cope with foggy brains and had a hard time with these "strange" procedures. On the plus side, they did not give up, even one man who got pretty frustrated.
2. No one fell asleep. I've had men fall asleep on me before, and I expect this because at first they spend sleepless nights coming off drugs/alcohol plus facing issues of conscience. Today I had full attention and full participation.
3. Even though some did not perform perfectly, by and large, they seemed to enjoy themselves. Teaching accompanied by an emotional response tends to stick in the memory better.
4. The one man who spent the whole time in frustration came up to me afterwards and said, "I've been here eight days, and I'm lost." Now, I'm pretty sure by "lost' he meant confused rather than unsaved, but I'm sure both meanings applied to him. 

I prayed with him, asking God's grace to open his mind and heart to the Word, to give him focus and understanding." If you're a believer reading this, take a moment to pray for Steve. I know he hears the Gospel daily at Home With a Heart. What he needs is the quickening power of the Holy Spirit.

Teaching Others in Order to Learn, part 2

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Mathew 10:5-7)

I note that Jesus sent the twelve out to teach people about the Kingdom of God even though they were still disciples -- learners. I find this significant, since I've already demonstrated that the Bible recognizes the value of teaching in order to learn.

A story follows that lends credence to the teaching-to-learn model of discipleship & education.

Back in 1990 a university professor shared the secret of his academic success. He did it in a book entitled The Overnight Student: How I went from Straight F's to Straight A's.

Gary North tells the prof's story:

 The professor had been a mediocre student in high school. He had gotten into college, but he flunked out. He asked to get back in. He was told that he would have to take correspondence courses first. He did. This took him two years.

He was re-admitted. But he was working three part-time jobs to pay for school. He worked very hard. He just barely got by academically. Then he made a discovery. He began using a simple technique for improving his comprehension. He describes it in Chapter 7 of his little book. He never got anything lower than an A from that point on. ("The Number-One Study Technique for Mastering New Material and Reviewing Old Material", garynorth.com)

The book now sells on Amazon for about a thousand dollars, used. The excerpt that follows reveals the kernel of his method:

Isaiah 28:13 tells us that the Lord teaches by giving us precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a little. [King James Translation] So, start at the beginning of your notes, your book, or whatever your source document is; and pick a bite-size portion, perhaps a paragraph,

and read it. Now look away from your notes or cover them, and don’t touch them. You won’t be allowed to touch them while you’re taking the test, so let’s get rid of that security blanket right now.

Use Your Tongue

Now, teach what you just read, out loud, using your own words, to an imaginary class. Don’t talk in a monotone. Vary your voice inflection. Use your hands. Be a teacher. (Dr. Michael L. Jones, p.25, Louis Publishing, Bellingham, WA)

When I first learned of this, I tried it, and I want to tell you, it required a lot of focus. In fact, I found it so mentally taxing that I gave up. 

The difference between this Jones method and Whole Person Discipleship (via Whole Brain Teaching) lies simply in the fact that you don't have to imagine an audience. Your disciple teaches the bite-sized bit of learning to another disciple, right there. Personalizing the message in his/her own words will come automatically and improve over time.

Thus, while it encourages me to have corroboration of the teaching-to-learn model, it gives me even greater pleasure to know that I have access to an equal or better method, more easily applied.

Here a Little, There a Little

Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. Isaiah 28:9-11

In the passage above, the Lord refers to His people's inability to grasp and assimilate covenantal ethics and likens them to children whom teachers must give instructions in only small increments. Here, God's prophet not only warns us about slowness of heart, but also gives an insight into an educational principle that some call "chunking" (breaking information into smaller chunks).

Chris Biffle puts it this way:

Now here is a curious fact that I and other Whole Brain Teachers have discovered. Disciplining yourself to speak in units that are 30 seconds or less and then having your students repeat your message to each other allows you to cover more material, not less. When you have become adept at . . . [it], you will have eliminated all the non-educational chaff from your presentation, all the wandering, redundancy, stumbling, verbal fumbling about. You present a few points; your students repeat them to each other; you present a few more. In the little periods when students are talking, you take mini-breaks to organize your thoughts for your next few sentences. We call this approach micro-lecturing. Micro-lecturing is not an easy skill, especially because most teachers love to talk and talk and talk. But remember our Whole Brain Teaching rule:

The more we talk, the more students we lose.

(Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids, p. 47)

As you disciple your charges, think about what you'd rather do. You might lecture for 30 minutes and have them walk away with maybe one or two concepts, or you could build one small concept upon another, punctuated by their teaching those concepts to each other, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little, so that they come away with the big picture as well as its parts.

Teaching Others in Order to Learn

And what things thou hast heard of me, by many witnesses, the same deliver to faithful men, which shall be able to teach other also. 2Timothy 2:2 (Geneva Bible)

Timothy's knowledge of the faith came not only from personal teaching by the Apostle himself, but the Apostle also utilized many witnesses to reinforce that instruction. This is how A.T. Robertson explains it:

 Plutarch has dia in this sense and Field (Ot. Norv.) suggests that it is a legal phrase “supported by many witnesses.” Not mere spectators, but testifiers. (Word Pictures of the New Testament)

In his Word Studies in the New Testament, M.R. Vincent concurs as he renders the the preposition to mean "through the medium of, and therefore in the presence of." You can see here the apostolic practice which made not only learning, but teaching others an important part of becoming a mature disciple.

Based on II Timothy 2:2, the Biblical model for the transmission belt of total discipleship looks something like this:

1. Things you heard from me personally/things you heard from me by many witnesses;
2. You teach same things to faithful disciples, personally/they teach same things to others.

Edgar Dale later rediscovered this principle, which he put into his famous "Cone of Experience". It boils down to the fact that while you remember no more than 5% of what you hear, you will remember 90% of what you teach.

Whole Brain Teaching has incorporated pupils teaching each other as an integral part of the learning process with the command/response, Teach/Okay. You can see an example of how one teacher uses it here:

The point here is that we should use Teach/Okay in our discipleship endeavors not just because it represents modern pedagogical practice, but also because it follows Biblical norms. I can see it useful in teaching Bible content and doctrine, Biblical worldview, Biblical ethics, and Biblical foundations for each discipline of the curriculum as well as curriculum content.

How well your charges teach each other the truth will inform you how well they have absorbed your teaching. This allows you immediate opportunity to correct false impressions and fill in incomplete knowledge.

It also gives you confidence that they will some day faithfully and effectually deliver the same truths to "faithful men which shall be able to teach others also."