Teaching Excellence

by Richard Bandler

  What a great example of tenacity in teaching! We hope newly qualified teachers learn from Anne and her determination to engage her learners. Together with this kind of tenacity and the skills discussed in this chapter, every teacher can have an enthusiastic and happy class. In the last chapter you learned how to create great states for yourself. This is important because the key to getting your students into the best learning states is to go first and feel the way you want your students to feel. Creating powerful and resourceful learning states for your students requires you to pay attention to the minute details of your interactions with them. Often, teachers are looking for the Holy Grail that will solve all their problems in one fell swoop. They want someone to say to them, ‘here, if you do THIS your class will do exactly what you want them to’ . However, it is the totality of the very small details that makes the difference. The small details are not insignificant, in fact they are absolutely crucial to engaging students and make a big difference!

  Setting up the group

  Put any number of individuals into a space together and they will form groups, as will your class when put in a room and left to their own devices. You may have noticed the way various alliances are formed and how sometimes someone can be excluded. Groups, as you know, generate their own identities and within that a set of accepted norms, behaviours and ‘states’. Then, enter the teacher to try and take control of the group!

  So let’s switch the focus from control of the group to management of the process of group formation. Whether you’re meeting a group for the first time or seeing them on a regular basis, ensuring the group has you at its centre, at the hub of the wheel, gives you command over the states and behaviours within the group. Rather than imposing control, you are determining the useful and resourceful feelings, thoughts and behaviours that support your students’ learning. As John La Valle, President of the Society of NLP®, says, ‘a class is not a democracy – it is a benign dictatorship!’ Your job is to lead the learning; therefore, the teacher is the leader of the group and should place him/herself at its centre.

  To place yourself at the centre of the group, there are many key variables beyond curriculum content and lesson plans, which you can be responsible for and manage. These include your state, your language, your non-verbal communication and to some extent the environment in which you teach your students. By paying attention to each of these variables, you not only establish rapport with your learners, you also manage the dynamic of the group. There is a great deal of discussion in NLP literature about rapport. Rapport is very simple and can be summed up as the presence of trust and co-operation in a relationship. It’s about letting the other person know you understand something of their map of the world in the present moment. It is useful in teaching, because it enables us to pace our learners’ starting position and lead them into better states, towards smarter decisions to maximise learning. Rapport is not, however, essential in all situations. Some people have said that in order to influence change in another person it is necessary first to have rapport. This is incorrect; if you need rapport there are ways to get it. It is useful to know how to build rapport and know how to break it. There are times to be in rapport and times not to be!

  Creating lines of light

  One essential time to build a strong personal connection and rapport with each learner is within the first seconds of your encounter with a group. This ensures that you build the first connection with each learner before members of the group have time to establish their own connections with each other. This puts you in the centre of the group as the person with the strongest influence to determine the states the whole group will utilise for learning. Once group members begin to get to know each other, they will establish rapport (or not) with each other. However, the main reference point for the group will be you, so your ability to influence the state of the group begins at that very first moment. They become the spokes of the wheel around your hub.

  How long do you think it takes to establish rapport? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? We’ve read many books that tell you this. However, the truth is that it can take just seconds, which is just as well when you have a group of 20 or 30 students.

  To establish rapport with your students, simply open your senses and take notice of what is happening for them right at that moment. For example, if a student looks proud of their new haircut, compliment them on it. Maybe a student has arrived flustered and nervous about whether they are in the right place, so reassure them that they are OK and say, ‘well done, you’ve got here!’ Of course, many teachers do this naturally, but few are aware of just how important it is. Often, teachers are distracted by concentrating on their own teaching needs, such as prepping materials or fixing their technology, and they miss a valuable opportunity.(2)

  Consider the difference between putting your attention on yourself and your attention on others.

  Super-fast rapport is built through attention on others

  Once you have rapport with each individual, you can begin to ‘pace’ the group. This means matching the state of another person or people verbally and non-verbally so that you can lead your student/s into the states that are really conducive to learning.

  When groups of teachers are asked during training, ‘how do you want your students to be in class?’ their responses invariably include words like attentive, quiet, receptive, listening, compliant, interested, and well-behaved . What would your list look like? Notice how passive some of these states are.

  Learning is an active process!

  Regardless of whether engagement with learning is obvious through external behaviours or not, the truth is that we do not want our students to be passive at all. We want our students to be engaged in a learning process through states of fascination, inquiry, challenge, laughter, enthusiasm, curiosity and sometimes even noise! These are active states, and learning is an active process.

  Active learning is sometimes very obvious to others but at other times may be less so. You are sitting reading this book and an observer focusing only on your external behaviour may assume that you are in a passive state. But pay attention to the internal behaviour, to what is going on inside you. Are you excited or curious right now? Are you referencing your past experiences or running forward to future times? Whatever your reaction and interaction with our words, you are probably not disengaged or unemotional.

  Our priorities for learning are that people are physically comfortable (warm, fed and dry), safe, and able to giggle easily. People like repetition and sameness because they make them feel safe and comfortable, but people learn through difference. So the states you create should create sufficient comfort to enable the person to take the risk of learning something different. Then make the learning dramatic, so it stands out as something really unusual. You may have a different priority for the states that your students find most useful, and this is good - the key is to be systematic.

  Consider which ‘states’ you want your students to be in at any one time during your lesson. If you could pick 3 from the following list, which 3 would you choose?

  calm | curious | excited | fascinated | creative | focused

  | frustrated | tenacious

  How might you create those states in yourself first so that you can lead the group into the same states?

  It would be very time-consuming if we had to create the states conducive for learning in our students every time we met them from scratch. It’s much more useful to be able to build upon earlier exchanges and re-access states quickly and easily. It’s fantastic when you realise that you’ve become so good at building learning states that you have created a super-fast trigger to change the state of your students instantly, without having to go through the process of setting up a new resourceful state for learning.

  So how do you do this? Well, we mentioned anchors in the last chapter, so let’s explore this some more. Anchoring is the process of associating an internal response with some external trigger. We establish anchors so that we can re-access a stat
e as and when we need a particular resource, such as curiosity or determination. A trigger or anchor fired in one sense or representational system will re-create an experience in that sense and other senses too.

  We can anchor states as they arise, or we can induce them so that we can easily get our students back to those states whenever it is helpful to do so. If your students are laughing and having fun, or fascinated with something, anchor it for later. If they are not, create the laughter or good feeling in them and then anchor it.

  Some people mix up this process with the system Pavlov used with his dogs, but this is not the case. Humans have the capacity for one-time learning, so there is no necessity for constant repetition, as in Pavlov’s model. Also, Pavlov was looking for external, physiological associations, while we are interested in re-accessing internal states.

  How to create and anchor a great learning state

  First, we decide what we want to happen and set about creating our learning state with a story, a joke or a visual aid. We then pay close attention to the non-verbal responses from the person or group, so we know just the right moment to anchor the state. This is a calibration process. The external trigger can be in any of the representational systems - visual, auditory, kinaesthetic - or any combination of any of these. Anchors can also be olfactory and gustatory. In class, the easiest anchors to use are auditory and visual, including a visual anchor associated with a particular place in the room, which is known as a spatial anchor.

  Anchors are not an NLP invention, they exist naturally. The creators of NLP simply noticed how people do this and started to use anchoring systematically. Think about how easily a particular feeling or state is invoked when you smell baking bread or hear a piece of music that takes you back to a moment in time, a place and a particular feeling. You may instantly see images of the place and the person you were with. This is more than just a memory, because the strong feelings you re-access are real in the moment. How about your response when someone puts their finger to their lips? What about a particular tone of voice? A raised eyebrow? Have you ever heard someone call a child’s name (which happened to be the same as yours) using the same tone of voice as your mother or father used with you? Did you notice how you experienced age regression and instantly felt like a little child again?

  Do you encourage students to answer a question by raising your hand as a signal for them to respond in the same way, without offering a verbal cue? What other anchors are you already using - a facial expression perhaps, or indicating a particular spot in the room? Think again for a moment which specific states it would be good for your students to be in at different times in your class. Maybe you would like quiet curiosity, wanton go-for–it, fascination or a fun state? When you stand at the front of the room, what states do your students go into now? This is the state or combination of states that you have already anchored to you in that spot. Is it what you want, or can you change it for something even better?

  This recently observed class illustrates opportunities to quickly and easily create good learning states and the opportunities for creating anchors to return to these states at another time. The class are teenagers, they are disengaged, and it’s the last class of the day. The teacher is at the front of the class and engaged in last-minute preparations, waiting for the students to arrive. The teenagers drift into class in twos and threes. Some wander around, others sit in their favourite places. Some are wearing baseball caps and hoodies, while others have MP3 players or mobile phones glued to their ears. Most are chatting. Jane is at the back of the class, in her usual place.

  Eventually the class is seated and the teachers says, ‘hello everyone, let’s begin’ . She asks the students to remove their hoods and turn off their music and introduces the topic with the list of objectives for the lesson. This process has taken 5 minutes and the students, although reasonably compliant, remain disengaged from the learning and focused on their own agenda.

  During a conversation with the teacher afterwards, some of the variables explained in this chapter were discussed. Simply but systematically the teacher made some key adjustments for the next lesson and the outcome was quite different.

  This time, the teacher uses the few moments before the class arrives to put on a piece of music which she has chosen to signal the beginning of class. She creates a warm and welcoming state for herself and then, as she stands at the classroom door, she greets each student with a smile and makes a suggestion or comment to each one. ‘Hi Dawn, lovely to see you on time today’. ‘How are you doing, George?’ ‘Alex, put your hood down so I can see your cheeky face – wow, that’s great!’ She smiles at Freddie, who is wearing earphones and mimes words to him until he takes off his ear plugs, when she continues out loud, saying, ‘and that’s the most important thing to remember!’ Smiling again, she greets other students - ‘Hi Amy, how’s that dog of yours?’ ‘Jane, I’d like your help today so sit near the front please. I just know you’re going to do so well today’ (Jane messed about at the back last week).

  The teacher returns to the front, turns the music off and says, ‘OK, I’ve got such a treat in store for you today’ , and then waits with a look of anticipation on her face. The total time to reach this point is 3 minutes and she has total silence and a group feeling good and anticipating the class.

  Our golden rule in teaching is never do one thing for one reason . That’s simply a waste of energy! Every sentence can be an instruction for an activity and to elicit a state. Every activity can meet multiple objectives and small things make a big difference. So what has this teacher achieved in the first 3 minutes? Here goes:

  The music: If you haven’t until now used music, we guarantee it will create an automatic state change. It can create a surprise or convey a message through the mood, tempo or lyrics. When you regularly use music, the students will respond to each piece differently and you can plan to invoke the response you want by repeating particular pieces. This then becomes an anchor for the state you have elicited. Think about having consistent pieces at the beginning and end of the lesson, and varying this occasionally for surprise or a state change, such as calm relaxation and reflection. Switching off the music signals another state change, indicating time to listen to the teacher.

  Greeting at the door: The purpose of this is to establish rapport with each student and establish your relationship with them as the primary one in the room. It also means that students feel good about themselves and you, and are likely to be more co-operative with you and the learning. It also signals that they are entering your space, where the primary relationship is with you. This is also an opportunity to manage some of the things that might otherwise get in the way of the learning. When suggestions and instructions are given positively they maintain the value of the individual. There is in each case a benefit to the student. This is not to say that using negative consequences is wrong – sometimes it is necessary. In NLP we call this ‘away from’ motivation because the motivation comes from thinking about what you don’t want to happen. However, a focus on moving ‘towards’ something maintains rapport, especially if it is combined with a statement that demonstrates how you value and respect the person. It also sends the person’s brain in the right direction! (We will explore this further later in the book).

  The teaching space: The area at the front of the class is already a spatial anchor, and by standing at the front the teacher automatically triggers responses to the anchors associated with this space. Unfortunately, standing in this space also fires off the anchors created in this space by other teachers. Remember, this is your space, so use it to maximise the teaching and learning experience; make sure only great learning states are anchored to you here!

  Bringing a class together is so much more than voicing instructions; it is not only what you say, but how you say it that makes a big impact. Consider your voice as a power tool; your state will be conveyed through your voice tone and your ability to influence your learners’ states is also carried by your voice. A sound is
heard not only with the ears - it is experienced as waves that bathe the neurology of the listener, so you can use your voice to elicit desired states such as curiosity and anticipation. You can make your words onomatopoeic, so that when you say ‘curious’ it sounds ‘cuuurrriooous?’ We are sure you are aware that exciting words used with an exciting voice tone create excitement, just as calm words with a calm voice tone create calmness. If you don’t create the desired state in your students straight away, continue with a story using a voice tone of curiosity or excitement. You can be even more elegant by having different gestures or facial expressions for these states.

  Many teachers will spend a few minutes talking to their students about things that are of interest to them to create some rapport. Once this few minutes ‘fun’ is over, the teacher says ‘OK, enough of that, time to get on with some work’ , often with a tone of resignation. This is a great waste of the opportunity to utilise the states that you have just helped to create in your students. It is much more powerful to link the state you have just created to the learning that is about to happen and this is really easy to do. Consider these examples:

  ‘We saw our team win the match last night, so now let’s see how we can all win the day with our Geography challenge.’

  Or

  ‘How about we solve our Biology mystery in the same way as Detective X did on TV last night.’

  Creating a really great state in your learners so they are ready to learn is only the first step. Now, we want to chain states together so that we lead learners swiftly and easily from one state to another, sometimes through hesitation or frustration, to a better place. Peter, a head teacher on an NLP Practitioner training for teachers, demonstrated how to elicit and anchor states particularly well. As an experienced teacher, he realised the importance of creating curiosity, but hadn’t realised the impact of being systematic. He regularly collected odd items in a special box for his group of 8-year-olds to guess what they were. So, something goes in the special box, he rattles the box and asks, ‘can anyone guess what’s in the box?’ The children are interested and begin to make guesses. The more outrageous the guesses are, the more intrigued the children become. Peter continues, saying, ‘no, it’s not Mr Brown’s nose’ , and, ‘no it’s not my dog’ , etc. After a minute or two he asks who would like to see what’s in the box. All the hands go up. He picks Martha and says, ‘have a look, but don’t let anyone else see’ . She peeks in and makes an ‘Ooooh’ sound. In this process, Peter’s class members are led from interest, through curiosity, to enthusiasm to anticipation. The box at the front of the class becomes a visual anchor any time Peter needs to re-access the state of intrigue with the children.