Effective Teaching Puts Business First, Fun Second

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One of the trickiest needles to thread: Holding high standards for students while having a good time.

The trick is to put business first, fun second. There’s a directionality to it.

As Jason describes: “You optimize too much for fun and then you’ve taught students that things can’t be hard. You can’t go from being this lax teacher that the kids don’t respect, and say ‘now I’m serious’ like you decided to become a hard-ass or something.

I [Jason] had a teacher like that. She wasn’t a serious person, so we didn’t respect her. Didn’t hate her. But then she started to be a hard ass, and then we hated her.

This other teacher was all business. There’s no messing around. You pay attention, and do what you’re supposed to do. And she would lighten up a little as the year went on, and then you loved her.

The most important thing for a teacher is not that they love you, it’s that they respect you and they do what they’re supposed to do and they take their work seriously.

If you transpose that onto a learning app and you’re like, “we’re fun,” all this dance and baloney, the kids are like, “whatever.” And then you’re like “all right, now we’re going to start learning hard,” the kids are like, “this is stupid.”

We can go from the teacher that was a hard ass, and we can lighten it up a little bit. People will be like, “oh, think my kid likes it a little more. It’s kind of fun.” That’s how it’s going to go.”

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