TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
to 70. For some it was the first time on
Introduction
In my early twenties, before studying
design, I spent a few years building
wooden sailboats in the winter and
teaching sailing in the summer. The core
principles of my teaching philosophy
originated in those summers.
Sailboat as a Studio
You can’t learn to sail by talking about
sailing or even watching someone sail.
You learn with your whole body, allow-
ing your brain to build links between the
feeling of the wind around your face,
the shifting of the hull beneath you, the
pressure in each of your hands on the
tiller and sheet. Controlling a sailboat
smoothly is a balancing act like walk-
ing. My sailing lessons therefore, start-
ed with me raising the sail, untying the
boat from the mooring and handing the
tiller and sheet to the student. I created
a safe space for them to experiment in
so their learning could primarily consist
of asking “what happens when I do this”
with me there to help interpret the re-
sults, the feedback from the boat and
wind. In the design classroom today, the
core principle remain the same: create
a safe space for experimentation and
help students assess and interpret the
results of their work.
Teaching to Difference
My sailing students ranged in age from 7
a boat, some were professional sail-
ors. Each lesson started with the same
teaching tool, a sailboat, but the
learning experience varied widely on
the water.
Some days there was no wind. Some
days there were whitecaps, winds of
25-30 mph. The tide varied by 7’. On
some lessons we could get out and
walk beside the boat miles from land. In
the face of all this uncontrolled
variation, I developed a simple strategy.
I would ask the learner/s why they were
there, digging deep enough to get past
the initial “I want to sail” answer. Then I
would propose some options for the
lesson (where to sail, what to focus on)
that matched the goals expressed by
the learner with the environment on the
water that day. I quickly discovered that
the goals varied as widely as the
weather.
Many young sailors wanted most to sim-
ply feel safe and in control on a boat. In
our lesson we would walk through per-
ceived dangers, developing the ability to
recover control. Many lessons were with
couples, whose true goals were focused
on their relationship. I would simply
mediate as they navigated the process
of sharing control of the boat. The most
experienced sailors were there to explore
a new environment in a new type of boat.
We would skim through narrow chan-
nels in the salt water march or explore Image Courtesy of Arey’s Pond Boat Yard
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
islands. I would talk about the history of
our boats design and its relation to the
tidal bay in which we sailed. Most impor-
tantly I learned that the ability to teach to
difference starts with an understanding of
the learner’s goals.
Functional Learning in an Information
Age
Most of my sailing students, even the
very young one, “knew” about sailing.
The could name the parts of the boat.
They could teach themselves about knots
about types of sails and types of boats. In
contrast, the experience I crafted for
them focused on developing an “ability
to” rather than “knowledge of”. The
learning was non-linguistic, at times sub-
liminal. In light wind we would “ghost” in
still silence straining the senses to feel,
see and anticipate subtle changes in the
wind and water. These experiences
taught me the power of using the whole
body as an information processing
system. Our instantaneous connection to
endless information is an amazing
resource, but we cannot relegate learn-
ing to books and screens and we cannot
substitute “knowledge about” for “ability
to”. The emergence of machine learning
provides a mirror for us to look again at
human learning and focus on maximizing
our unique capabilities. My years teach-
ing sailing are a reminder to create expe-
riences for students that are multisensory
and interlinguistic -- that fully engage all
three layers of the brain and its interfaces
with the world.
These principles: Learning through
experimentation, teaching to difference
and human focused learning have guided
my teaching practice. As I have taught
in different environments, in different
schools, to different age groups I start by
asking:
Am I creating a safe space for learners to
experiment?
Do I understand the underlying goals of
each learner?
Is my teaching engaging learners fully as
human beings?
The answer, of course, is that I can
always do better. Each teaching experi-
ence though, helps me improve, provides
opportunities to test new strategies and
get feedback from new perspectives.
I will unpack some of my thinking on
teaching to difference in the design stu-
dio, as it has developed over the years.