New Forms of Education - Ep. 23 # extract with Kristen Simonson

Name: New Forms of Education - Ep. 23 # extract with Kristen Simonson
Uploaded: 2021-10-15T10:38:21+00:00
Duration: 1 min 50 s
Channel: Virginie Glaenzer
Description: In this excerpt, Kristen Simonson reflects on how the role of teachers is shifting away from a traditional, front‑of‑class, dictatorial stance toward a…

15 Oct 2021 · 2 min

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In this excerpt, Kristen Simonson reflects on how the role of teachers is shifting away from a traditional, front‑of‑class, dictatorial stance toward a more facilitative, flexible approach. She describes her personal transition from primarily delivering content to acting as a guide who steps back, allowing students to explore, ask questions, and discover answers. Simonson notes that teaching outside the conventional classroom—removing walls, rows, and rigid structures—makes facilitation easier and reduces concerns about classroom management. She suggests that education has over‑emphasized dictation (notes, lessons, experiments) and calls for a rebalancing toward student‑led inquiry, acknowledging that this shift may feel uncomfortable but is supported by greater experience and a willingness to reduce ego.

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I mean, I think the role of, of a teacher is also changing. I think that's, that's maybe making for some of the uncomfortable moments that I'll maybe address later when I talk about our program. But I have seen my role change from the person who stands at the front of the class and dictates even though I do still do that sometimes, to someone who facilitates more. And so to take a bit of a back approach, and I don't know if that's a reduction of ego, or if that's a little bit, maybe I'm older now with more experience, and so flexibility isn't as much of an issue. I can be extremely flexible, and I'm not worried about classroom management disintegrating or— and I mean, I also do a lot of teaching outside. So you take the walls away and you've taken a lot of the structure, the physical rows, columns, box structure away, and it just gets a lot easier to facilitate than it does to dictate. And I think, I mean, we tend to focus on that so much in education, the dictate. I'm going to dictate notes, I'm going to dictate the lesson, I'm going to dictate what you need to find out as an experiment. And we maybe need to back off that a little bit and facilitate instead and say, what can you find? What can you learn? What did you come up with? That's a teeter-totter that needs to maybe tip the other way. Mm-hmm.