MURCIA. If anything has changed during the pandemic, it is the education system. It is difficult to find another example of acceleration more striking than that of education. That is why the new book by Daniel Cassany -reputed popularizer and researcher, author of books such as The kitchen of writing The Sharpen the pencil– is more timely than ever. The art of teaching (according to a linguist), published in Anagrama, is an enjoyable and highly satisfactory journey through the classrooms that Cassany has traveled, trying to help all the teachers who share their knowledge every day. The art of teaching is a manual for all those who face a teaching task and addresses other questions of a social nature: How to avoid stress for teachers? Have teachers lost their authority in class? What are the digital waves like?
-The book begins by talking about the teacher’s anguish the first day he enters class, even when he has been teaching for so many years. Why is it produced and how can it be combated?
-It’s not a bad thing. It is a sign of the concern that many teachers have for the classes and our students. It usually disappears when you meet the students and start working. I think it is good to have it because it indicates commitment and responsibility.
-The book is specially dedicated to teachers and teachers, but can we extract lessons from it for our daily lives and for areas outside education?
-We all live in situations similar to classes, in which we have to teach or help others to learn. In the family, at work, at leisure … For these situations, the book can be useful. On the other hand, we are all also students or learners throughout our lives, so that teaching is something that always accompanies us all.
-He says in the book that one of the things that taught him to be a good teacher is teaching bank employees to write reports, memoirs and letters with plain style. How was the experience?
-It was a sobering experience. I was very young and some of my students had started working in this bank before I was born. Added to my fears was the insecurity of these employees who “were forced to train” with a pee who was going to explain to them how to do better what they had been doing for years.
– Did you get them to write in that simple way?
– I believe that yes that they improved his reports and writings, with my models and corrections. His boss came to congratulate me on finishing the first classes.
-What differences – advantages and disadvantages – do you find between the hybrid classroom (physical and virtual) of today and the classes of the eighties and nineties?
-Current classrooms are more complex, with virtual components (learning platform, with mail, forums, repositories, etc.) but much more efficient. Students have more options for learning, with various types of materials, synchronous and asynchronous tasks. But the teacher has much more work. Before it was enough to give the class and correct; now it is necessary to prepare the digital materials, upload them to the platform, attend them to the students by mail or chat.
-In what way has the only virtual classroom – the digital classroom – been installed in our days with the pandemic? Do you think teachers have been able to respond to such a challenge?
-We have done what we could. Let’s say that this damn virus has not let us choose. Digital classrooms already existed before their arrival, for example, in distance education (UNED, Open University, Universitat Oberta), which is above all asynchronous, that is, it does not require teachers and students to coincide in time online. But in the sudden confinement we had to forcibly digitize the classes and it was done synchronously: teacher and students connected online at the same class times. And this has been very hard because neither teachers nor students were prepared. If it is already difficult to follow four or five hours of class in a physical classroom, imagine yourself on a screen from home, with your whole family by your side doing their things.
-It says in the book that students no longer listen to teachers with ceremonious respect or blind obedience. How to deal with this type of student with little affection for authority? How to conquer them? Are they, the students, the ones with the most power in today’s classrooms?
-You have to do more dynamic classes, involving students, working in groups, solving tasks … The teacher should not speak for more than fifteen minutes in a one-hour class. The normal thing in life is conversation or dialogue, frequently changing roles: now you say something, now you listen, now you respond, etc. When a teacher speaks for sixty minutes in class, students are most likely to listen for only the first few minutes, to leave their bodies in class pretending to listen, but to have their minds drift elsewhere.
-Why do you defend the ‘cooperative classroom’ and ‘corporate learning’?
-Because people are more like ants than tigers, that is, we live in community. We are organized in schools, hospitals, newspapers, cities, families, solving complex tasks in a collaborative way. It is not much use to have great knowledge and good skills in something if you do not know how to listen to your partner, if you cannot negotiate and reach agreements with him or her. The old school – with separate desks and a ban on speaking – is not the one we want for the future.
-How important is the non-verbal language of a teacher in a classroom?
-The same as in real life, that is, all of it. We all notice, by their non-verbal behavior, when someone is uncomfortable even if they don’t say it or even deny it. In the classroom it is no different. The look, the gestures and the body of the teacher indicate a lot to the student, so the teacher must work on them as well.
-What is the worst failure for a teacher? Maybe not be understood?
-When you can’t connect with a student. When, despite asking or being interested in him or her, you do not understand it and you cannot do anything to incorporate it into the class. If you come to understand the student, it is easier to be able to talk to him and start a dialogue.
-Finally, it says in the book that it is very important to promote speech in the class, that the students raise their voices and dialogue. Why is it so difficult for them?
-We come from a school of silence, in which the best class was – supposedly – the one in which the students were silent, supposedly listening and learning from the teacher, who is the one who held knowledge. Many students are used to and well-off in this situation and openly say that “I don’t like talking in class.” But today we know that you learn more when you are more active, when you participate and get involved. This is why it is the teacher’s job to help students speak.
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