Teaching Excellence

by Richard Bandler

  Now the interesting thing about this example is that when Peter shared it with other teachers during his NLP Practitioner training, he got the same response from the adults. As soon as Peter used his ‘what’s in the box children?’ voice and looked really curious the other participants on the course instantly regressed to their 8-year-old states! They gave answers with the enthusiasm of children and were back to their optimum learning state of fun, curiosity, and abandonment.

  Peter was completely congruent in this process. This term ‘congruent’ means that all your internal beliefs, strategies and behaviours are fully in agreement and aimed at a specific desired outcome (in this case, eliciting and anchoring states). And guess what? The box didn’t exist, either. Peter just mimed the box – and he did this so congruently our imagination created the box. Thus, everything lines up and the result is elegant!

  Sometimes, all a teacher needs to do to create great states in learners is to confidently and congruently exude and demonstrate the state powerfully, so that it becomes contagious. Even laughter or the odd sneer will be won over. However, it can be tricky, going from feeling disengaged to enthusiastic in one move, and sometimes the gap between where your students are and where you want them to be is too big a leap, so you may want to build baby steps to bridge the gap and lead them from their current state through to the desired one for optimum learning. We call this chaining states . A typical sequence would be:

  boredom hesitation curiosity frustration go for it!

  So we pace and lead step by step through a variety of states until we get our students into a great learning state.

  How do we do this? Well, if you have students who arrive in class bored and uninterested, first match the boredom and anchor it by talking to them in a bored voice and yawning as you do it. Stand in a slumped position to one side and create a visual and spatial anchor for this state. Next, create a state of hesitation, maybe by discussing something disgusting, such as eating mouldy pizza; something they would avoid so they ‘hesitate’! Pull a horrible face and move to a different place in the classroom as you do this. Then, move on to curiosity by talking about something strange on a TV programme or using a prop such as a bag with ‘do not look in here’ written on it. Anchor this state with a curious ‘Ooooh’ sound as you point to the prop.

  Now create a state of frustration and anchor it. Why? Because this is your propulsion mechanism! To do this, tell them that they are going to have fun working together – but not yet! Repeat this a few times – now – but not yet – now but not yet. The more you feel frustrated the more likely you are to just go for it when you finally get the opportunity. Finally, create a state of ‘wanton go-for-it’.

  To do this all you need to do is to talk about something that your students would really desire; that delicious sweet on the sweet trolley, the top-of-the-range iPad, winning X Factor.

  You can anchor these states in many different ways. You can use a look, a gesture, a tone of voice. If you choose to, you can anchor these states in different parts of the room by standing in one specific spot as you create a state and you can easily move back and forth between the states. Many primary school teachers already use this process without realising that is what they are doing. Think about the ‘curiosity table’, the story mat, the naughty chair! All these are examples of spatial anchors where a particular state is established in one place and re-accessed when the children return to it.

  Whenever you want to re-access a particular state in your students, simply go back and stand in exactly the same place, use exactly the same gesture or facial expression and voice tone, or mention the story you were telling when you set the anchor. You may notice that any one of these actions will re-access the state for your students.(3)

  Once you have a series of anchors and have created a sequence that leads from one state to another so that the students can move into the most resourceful states for learning, the trick is to chain the states together so that the sequence runs automatically. This means that rather than having to move from one to the other and fire off each anchor, the state, for example boredom, automatically leaks into the state of curiosity, or the state of confusion, say, swiftly leads to a state of understanding. Running the sequence over and over, faster and faster will create in the students the ability to move themselves from an unhappy place to a happy place where they are achieving and feeling good.

  Now, armed with your use of language, voice tone, gestures and facial expressions, notice the point at which your students go into the exquisite learning state that you are eliciting and use the tools explained above to create an anchor for that state. If you have these anchors established spatially, simply move from one space to the next and the next, quickly.

  The truth is that you are always communicating something, so choose what is best for your group, and remember to go there first! Remember, you cannot not communicate, and the opportunities to create wonderful, effective learning states are endless, so go ahead and do it on purpose and have fun succeeding!

  summary

  In this chapter you have learned how to recognise many of the variables that are useful in creating great learning states for your learners. You may not be aware of how easily you can now anchor these states in your classroom so you can enable your students to re-access the most resourceful states to continue learning. You can now chain states together in a classroom context so you can lead students from unhelpful states such as boredom to resourceful learning states such as curiosity and motivation quickly and easily.

  references

  1. Attributed to William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

  2. In a study by Matrix (Theory into Practice Ltd) of the evaluation grades given to trainers

  by participants, the key variable between a grade 1 (excellent) and a grade 2 (very good)

  evaluation was determined to be where the trainer’s attention was on entry to the training room. Where the attention was on the participants the trainer gained a higher proportion of grade 1 grades. Where the attention was on the technology and training set up at the front of the room the trainer was given more grade 2 evaluations

  3. For an example of kinaesthetic and auditory anchoring see the first 2 minutes of this video https://richardbandler.com/snake

  activities

  Activity 1

  Take a few moments to relax and recall times when you learned really well and enjoyed learning. What were the states that were most conducive to your learning? Here’s a list to help you. Circle the ones that work for you:

  Excitement

  Awareness

  Interest

  Receptivity

  Sleepiness

  Openness

  Fascination

  Curiosity

  Flexibility

  Dreaminess

  Frustration

  Calmness

  Determination

  Creativity

  Pragmatism

  Laughter

  Relaxation

  Confidence

  Fear

  Joy

  Enthusiasm

  Commitment

  Motivation

  Calmness

  Comfort

  Add any others of your own that are not listed. Now spend a few moments thinking about how you can systematically generate these states in your students:

  Where can you stand?

  What words express the state best?

  What stories can you tell?

  What facial expressions can you use?

  What tonality expresses the state?

  What props can you use?

  Activity 2

  Pick one lesson you are teaching in the next few days and build in as many opportunities as you can to generate great states for learning.

  Pay attention to the little things that make the biggest difference. Recall the differences in response from your students. What do you want to take forward into the next lesson?

  Note them down here:

  Opportunity
r />   State

  Activity

  Tap to download Resources

  This eBook is licensed to Dominic Luzi, dluzi@managementalchemy.com on 10/18/2018

  chapter 12

  Building an

  Effective Learning Environment

  TAP THIS TO SEE THE VIDEOS

  ‘And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed!

  Ninety-eight and three-quarters per centh

  guaranteed!’ (1)

  Dr Seuss

  In this chapter

  The success focus attitude

  The keys to engagement and motivation in the classroom

  Building exciting learning outcomes

  Removing barriers to success

  A 13-year-old girl was struggling with Physics at school. She hated the lessons, thought the teacher was ‘boring’, and wanted to drop the subject at the earliest opportunity. Her dad had different ideas. As a scientist,

  he wanted his daughter to enjoy science and keep studying it for at least a few more years. So what did he do? Get extra tuition? Tutor him herself? Change classes? No, he took her to the fairground! Do you want to know why?

  Many teachers are taught that the very first thing they must do at the beginning of a lesson is to make it clear to the students what the aims and objectives of the session are. The received wisdom is that we must ensure students know the objectives so they can check their understanding. Some schools even insist on a pro forma to standardise introductions. Unfortunately, this practice ensures a minimum standard, but does not create excellent lesson introductions.

  When we study the great teachers, we find that they rarely go straight to the point. Instead, they ignite engagement, where the students’ faces look enthused rather than bemused, and where heads begin to nod slowly as activated minds begin to get the ideas being conveyed. Great teachers stack the odds in favour of their students being successful before they start, and often teach the learning through metaphors and anecdotes first, so the students unconsciously learn and understand before they become conscious of learning something new. This makes the learning easier, because it creates a sense of familiarity with the subject and a feeling that they already know what they are learning. After all, is it easier to do something for the first or the second time?

  The young girl at the fairground learned about velocity, speed and centrifugal force by going on the fairground rides with her dad. The thrills of the rides created a wonderful state of excitement at the same time, so she became enthused with learning how the designers of these rides created thrills using physics. And it isn’t necessary to actually go to the fairground, however much fun this might be, because students can understand the effect of these forces kinaesthetically |, through a story or metaphor and by remembering great times at fun fairs, before they consciously explore the science. Thus, you have the added benefit of creating excitement and thrills as they re-experience their last trip to the fair.

  Even if there are constraints imposed by the school or Education authority on how to introduce a lesson, we have a secret weapon to ensure that we inform students of the content of the lesson whilst also ensuring that they are going to learn easily and enjoyably. The other good news is that it only takes small changes in what you do, it costs nothing and it doesn’t require extra preparation to make this happen. All we do is use our greatest tool - our language - in elegant and effective ways to send our students’ brains in the right direction. People are hard-wired for language and communication, and these are the tools of the trade for teachers - hence more than 40 years of developing the ‘L’ (Linguistic) in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). As teachers, we not only want to communicate content, we want to use language elegantly and precisely. Language has power and it would be folly to let that power leak in the wrong ways.

  The Milton Model is one of two systematic linguistic models developed by the co-creators of NLP. Milton Model language patterns were originally modelled from Milton Erikson, an acclaimed medical doctor, psychiatrist and hypnotherapist. His outstanding success in influencing patients to become well again was described as being ‘artfully vague’ - in a very systematic way. NLP’s co-founders - Richard and his research partner John Grinder - studied these patterns, then replicated and systemised them.(2)

  This model, when used precisely and elegantly, enables us to ensure that any communication is understood as applying personally to the listener, even when a group is being addressed, and can potentially bypass resistance and hesitation to new ideas and learning. This is important, because even though we are teaching a group, each member of the group is learning as an individual.

  During a lesson introduction, Milton language patterns prime the learning, seed possibility, and open new channels of receptiveness. We can teach students ahead of time what they need to know, so that when they become consciously aware of the learning content, it actually feels familiar to them, as if they are coming to it for a second time. So let’s see how this works:

  Learning to use language in specific ways and making small but significant changes to our language can have really impressive results with learners. Take Sue, for example. Sue works with children with hearing impairment and she participated in the original Durham Project (Chapter 3). Sue began to realise that her language was creating results in her pupils which she didn’t want. One little boy was very nervous and a real worrier. She explained that previously she told him, ‘don’t worry, this isn’t hard and if you get stuck I am here to help you’ . After the training, she changed her language and instead she said, ‘I know you will do a great piece of work because you have loved this story and you already have lots of lovely ideas so you can really enjoy writing about them.’ She was delighted to report that the child’s behaviour instantly changed and he immediately produced his first ever piece of totally independent writing. There was no panic, no delaying tactics and no pleas for help – a total transformation! (3)

  Let’s take a look at what Sue initially said to the boy, and notice a) how she inadvertently suggested some unhelpful internal states, such as worry, hard and stuck and, b) how by making herself available as his helper, she potentially undermined his sense of capability. The brain does not operationalise a negative. It understands consciously what a negative (don’t) is, but it can’t do a ‘don’t. The brain cancels out the negative and responds to the words ‘worry’ ‘hard’ ‘stuck’ as commands .

  Now take a look at the language Sue used after NLP training. This time, you’ll notice, a) she pre-supposed his ‘easy’ success (‘I know you will’ ) – all by himself and, b) she pre-supposed and attached really helpful states by using words like ‘great, loved, lovely, enjoy’ .

  Sue pre-framed the session to enable the little boy to consider his own success possible, ahead of time, easily AND independently.

  Now you can begin to see that in setting up a lesson there are a number of key variables to pay attention to, including:

  How to speak to each student and grab their attention in a way that means the learning applies each student personally, whilst speaking to the whole class

  How to presuppose successful outcomes so learners imagine their success

  How to ensure learners continue to be motivated by connecting their reality to their outcome

  How to remove barriers and inoculate against anything that could get in the way of students’ achievement So let’s consider some of the Milton Model language patterns. We wonder what you will notice when you have adopted just one or two of them over the coming days as you set up your lessons. When you become aware of the ones that have the greatest impact on your class, you can then start adding more.

  How to speak to each student within the whole class

  Statements, stories, or questions that by design are generalisations that apply to everyone are known as Universal Quantifiers. The effect is that the listener feels they are being spoken to personally, even though they may be part of a large group. They feel that the lesson applies directly to them
.

  Here are some examples of statements that must be true for everyone - and therefore true for the individual. These are Universal Quantifiers:

  I know you have had the experience of learning new things

  When you were little you learned to talk by copying other people

  As you are sitting in this room with your classmates

  When you came into school this morning each step brought you closer to this moment

  Similarly, we can still generalise and ensure a statement applies to the student by offering an alternative, where if one thing isn’t true the other must be. Like this: