How To Create Good Education: Start At The End

You love yoga and want to share your understanding more deeply with others. So you think about different options: perhaps it’s an immersion, perhaps it’s a training, or a workshop.

So when you start planning, the natural inclination is for you to start by thinking about what you know, and how you’re going to share it with your students.

Makes sense, right?

Yes, absolutely. But unfortunately, this isn’t the best way to help your students learn.

You’re what the educational field calls a “content expert.” And it’s natural for most content experts to think about generously sharing their knowledge to their students. And if we could do a Matrix like download and somehow get it into their brains, that would work just fine (take the red pill, Neo).

However, learning doesn’t quite work that way. So in order to channel your knowledge goodness in the right way, here’s a simple and radical piece of advice: start with the end in mind.

In order to channel all your knowledge goodness in the right way, start with the end in mind.

Consider:

• what you what your students to be able to do at the end of your time with them
• how they’re going to demonstrate their learning to you

Once you have your assessment in mind (whether it’s a practice teach, a practice, a show and tell, a project, or a test), then work backwards to create your content.

Working with the end in mind puts your student at the center and clarifies exactly what you need to teach to help them succeed. This clarification is essential because it helps us to avoid a major training trap: giving too much information.

Working backwards helps us avoid the training trap of giving too much information.

When you crystallize your learning objectives (what you want students to do as a result of the training) and work backwards, you will discard the superfluous material (interesting as it may be!) that doesn’t relate to this goal. (This is what I call, “killing your children.” Although it’s painful to leave material out, it’s better for the success of your students!) As content experts, we usually want to give too much, which overloads our students and undermines learning.

By starting with the end in mind, you are setting your students up for learning success, and taking a strong step from being a teacher – to being an educator.

For more information about creating awesome education, check out the resources in my online course: Create Your Training.