Last month I wanted to refresh my mind and expose myself to some inspiration on how to teach my middle school students better. With this in mind, I read “Teach Like a PIRATE: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator” by Dave Burgess. PIRATE is an acronym Burgess uses to refer to six different principles that he proposes a teacher can focus on to ensure learning happens in the classroom. In this post, I’d like to reflect on each of these principles with a few ideas of my own.
Passion: Teachers need to bring passion into their work. Burgess breaks down passion into three parts: content passion, professional passion, and personal passion. Content passion refers to being passionate about what you are teaching. Professional passion refers to clearly knowing what it is about being an educator that drives us as teachers. Personal passion refers to finding as many ways as possible to incorporate the personal passions we have into our work. Students can tell if a teacher is passionate or not. And this passion can transfer onto students if these three passions are well integrated into the learning experiences we create for our students.
Immersion: Teachers must immerse themselves in the learning process. Burgess gives the analogy of teachers as swimmers rather than lifeguards, saying that “A lifeguard sits above the action and supervises the pool deck. Although he or she is focused, there is a distinct sense of separateness both physically and mentally. In contrast, a swimmer is out participating and an integral part of the action.” A teacher can simply give instructions and then have students get on with the task, but this is not nearly as valuable as immersing in the task itself with the students. This involves asking questions, facilitating discussions, and participating in the learning process alongside their students. In turn, this fosters a sense of shared exploration and discovery.
Rapport: Rapport refers to a positive relationship characterized by mutual understanding, trust, and communication. It is an essential element of a teacher-student connections as it can enhance cooperation. Rapport also helps teachers avoid conflicts and misunderstandings that often can happen in a teacher-student relationship. There are different ways to build rapport but there is one common trait in the process of rapport building – emotional intelligence. It is important to empathize with students and understand their feelings, perspectives, and experiences. When students feel that their teachers genuinely understand them, it fosters a sense of connection and trust, leading to rapport.
Ask and Analyze: This principle refers to asking questions to yourself as an educator on what could work in the classroom and then analyzing whether it does or not. I have experienced this with my own lessons. I created a global trade simulation for my students to learn about concepts of international trade including import/export, free trade, trade restrictions and so on. This was a very complex lesson and in theory it was a great lesson. But the first time I delivered it, I had a lot of things I needed to change in the lesson. This involved asking, analyzing, and being committed to the process of creating an incredibly creative, fun, and engaging lesson. Now that I have taught this lesson more than a few times, every subsequent time I do it, it becomes more refined and polished. This principle is essentially about having a commitment to the creative process of learning design. If one is committed to the process, one will eventually see results.
Transformation: This principle emphasizes the importance of transforming the classroom environment and lessons to make them remarkable and memorable. Burgess asks a couple of critical questions about this: 1. Would you be teaching in an empty room if students didn't have to be there? and 2. Do you have lessons that are so engaging and impressive that you could sell tickets for them? Techers should position and reframe the learning material in a way that students are engaged. This in itself has many different strategies including dynamic activities, catering to various learning styles, and letting students simply have fun, to name a few.
Enthusiasm: The final principle is which is all about having of a positive attitude towards teaching. The infectious nature of enthusiasm is a tool for any teacher. When a teacher is excited, students can feel it. This shared energy creates a dynamic classroom environment of curiosity motivation and interest. Enthusiastic teachers have the power to transform the educational experience, making learning engaging and fun. The ripple effect is profound – and students are more likely to mirror that enthusiasm, fostering an atmosphere where the joy of learning becomes contagious.
“Teach Like a PIRATE” is a call for all teachers to reignite their own commitment to the craft of teaching. If teachers are committed and motivated to create the best learning experiences for their students, this in turn trickles down to each and every student.