Blair Singer argues that COVID-19 didn't break education, it exposed that teaching methods were already broken. The fix isn't better technology but energy, engagement, and shifting from memorization to discovery and real-world application.
Okay, we're going back to school. We're not going back to school. Is it going to be online or is it going to be offline? Are teachers going to show up or are they not going to show up? Parents going to send their kids or they're not going to send their kids? Everybody's wondering, schools coming up. But I'm just going to tell you right now that everybody's focused on the wrong thing. If you recall back in, when quarantine first started, I'm thinking on the second day of quarantine here in the United States, I did a video and I said, the. The era of education as we know it, traditional school education. Kids go to school. That whole institution, the whole system's been flipped on its backside within 48 hours when kids couldn't go to school because they had to finish their curriculum. So, okay, we're gonna go online. It's gonna fix it. Didn't fix it. And now we're so many months down the road, we're facing the same issue again. Why. Why do you get. Why do you face the same problem again because you didn't learn your lesson the first time? Has that ever happened to you? Am I the only one? Okay, well, this one may die hard, but right now, if you listen closely, what I'm going to do, my best is because one of my core values is education and knowledge, and I've loved to learn all my life. I didn't like school that much, but I love to learn, okay? And there's a way to learn, okay? So if you're a teacher, if you're a trainer, if you're a leader, if you're a coach, listen closely, because these six things could change everything for you and for your students. I mean, think about it. If you know the seven things I'm going to show you, people are actually going to learn from you, number one. Number two, if you're a trainer, the demand for who you are and what you're going to do is go crazy. Because right now, there's a huge void in the marketplace. Kids, adults, companies, all of that. You're going to have rave reviews. But I think the most important part of all is not that. It's the fact that even online, right through this camera, you. You can change somebody's life. Think about it. We've all had teachers at some level in our lives or mentors that did something somehow that changed our lives. What if I could tell you there's a process for doing that? What if I could tell you that you could Learn how to do that. Well, you can. So listen closely. I'm going to share with you how to do it, because everybody thinks that technology is the answer. No, technology only accelerated and magnified the problem. Think about, like, hd, right? Everybody thought, well, we're gonna watch sports on HD now. It's gonna be really clear picture. But what does it do? The problem with that is you can actually see the details. You can see the wrinkles and ugliness in people's faces. And so all of a sudden, what you did is by improving the technology, you magnified the problems. Okay? The problem is knowing how to teach. Know. Knowing how to teach. Look, the old system, a teacher was a preacher, a lecturer, and make. If you're a leader and you're making promises and that style doesn't work anymore, what do you got to do? You got to serve, come from service, be willing to help other people, really teach and really facilitate. And I'm going to explain. I'm going to explain that in a minute. I mean, right now, in our tribe of trainers all over the world, we have people that are being asked by school systems to take over whole curriculums, even though they've never taught in school before. Why? Because our guys know how to teach. So whether you're on a camera or not on a camera, it's still teaching. Is still teaching. If you know what you're doing, it's the way you teach. It's more important than what you're teaching. Okay, so I'm going to run through these really quickly because I'm trying to make this brief. Number one, one thing to understand is we've gone from classroom, we're now online. That's not going away. That's the way it is. So get used to it. Learn some basic technology. And we teach some of that stuff in some of our courses. But you got to learn it and just get over that you're not going to be doing it, because you can't. And the good news is, if you know how to teach, doesn't matter whether you're on a zoom call or whether they're in a room. Okay? That's number one. Number two, most teachers and presenters are boring. Boring. That's the biggest problem of all. You have kids that, you know, they go into a room, they feel like they've been drugged. You know, they're. They're dying in there. Zoom calls? No, no, different. The thing is, they could. They could pretend that they're watching you and they're not watching you, and they're multitasking and they're. And they're bombing your. Your. Your zoom calls. Okay, so what's the answer? You can't be boring anymore. It requires energy. Energy. Say it with me. Say energy, but say it with some energy. Energy. Right. Look, two people come together and in a negotiation and discussions and sales person with high energy generally wins. You know that. If your kids have higher energy than yours, who wins? They do. So you got to have energy. You got to at least be able to match it and take it one level up. If you don't, then there are ways to do that too. There are ways to do that, too. I'm not going to spend the time and cover all that. We'll be here all day. Okay, number three. Number three, your expectations. Your expectations. At a teacher most expectation most teachers is they expect the students to listen, to read, remember, and regurgitate. I'll say it again. Listen, read, remember, regurgitate. It's the lowest form of retention. Is reading and listening lowest form of retention? Unless you have some energy into it. So rather than that, you set your expectations that you want your students to respond, to discover, to experiment, to experience, ask questions, and to apply. Okay, it's a whole different frame. You may not teach as much data, but you can have really smart students are going to want to learn more, and they're going to. And you're going to change people's lives. I don't care what you're teaching. It's the way you're teaching is doing it. Okay, number three, is what you're teaching relevant or irrelevant? If it's irrelevant, make it relevant. Even if the material is like calculus? How do you make calculus relevant? Well, it's not about the calculus. It's about getting your brain to work, because certain parts of your brain work better than others. And if we know that you learn musical instruments, you do mathematics, these are kind of things you can. I'm making it up, but, you know, you're the expert or become the expert. Make it relevant. Make it relevant to people.
