Should You Change Your Teaching Style to Reach More Students?

One of the things I like remind my teacher training students is that if a student is not “getting” what we’re teaching, it’s our responsibility to look for ways to help them understand. Demonstrating the same pose in the same way or repeating the same phrase over and over often does not lead to understanding. Most teachers do reach for different analogies, ways of demonstrating and/or physical cues, but they may still stay within the confines of their particular learning and teaching style or styles.

Research backs up the idea that we should vary our teaching approach to reach more students when we teach yoga, But when we do this, do we risk losing a bit of our authenticity, a piece of that magical, unique “thing” that helps us connect with students whose learning style most closely jives with our own?

Education theorists have been discussing learning preferences since at least the early 1970s. One of the more popular models (VARK), postulates there are four major learning preferences.¹ And using this model, the results of a diagnostic survey of 40,000 people 18+ in California colleges, community colleges and corporations² stacked up like this:

Kinesthetic/Tactile: Females = 17% & Males = 17%
Auditory: Females = 35% & Males = 28%
Visual/NonVerbal (images): Females = 38% & Males = 49%
Visual/Verbal (readers): Females = 38% & Males = 22%
Balanced: Females = 23% & Males = 23%

A more recent theory speculates that students do better when the teaching style runs counter to their learning style.³ However, I think both come to the same conclusion—the more learning styles you bring into the classroom, the better for all students. Lately I’ve begun asking myself: Is this really true? Is it possible for all teachers? Is it even relevant to the yoga classroom?

Unless you’re very astute and aware, your learning preference will most likely be your teaching style.And despite current theories, my personal experience as an instructor and a learner is that students have a distinct advantage if their learning style mirrors yours and that students may not return to your class if their styles don’t.

Unlike many teachers, I’m just not in my comfort zone creating cues in the form of beautifully crafted and playful metaphors, interweaving movement and feeling with nature. Both auditory and visual teachers may use phrases like, “Feel your feet like roots burrowing deep into the soil, grounding you as your arms bud and your fingertips flower towards the sky,” to fluidly and poetically lead students in and out of poses. I am not skilled at painting (let alone seeing) vivid visualizations of swirling shapes and exploding color that can vitally connect students to their energy, breath, movement, and meditation practice.

Despite my own discomfort, these teaching styles employ deliciously and powerfully descriptive and visual ways of connecting, transitioning, and deepening for many students. They feel these words and visual images at a profound level and feel taken care of without ever having to be touched. And this makes sense, as about 75% of all learners are auditory and/or nonverbal visual learners… and thus, teachers.

This does not make sense to me in my own body, however. Not only am I part of the 17% who make up that smallest of groups—kinesthetic learners, I’m neither an auditory nor a visual nonverbal learner. Thus, I often struggle in teaching in these modalities. Perhaps as a result, I also tend to have smaller classroom sizes and, for the same reason, I like it that way.

Not surprisingly, I often teach students through physical touch and individual aligning and assisting in asanas, bandhas and breath work. I do brief demonstrations, but I’m quickly up, scanning, and walking the room, reminding students to breathe and stay inside their bodies while I align and support them (read poking) with my fingers and hands. To facilitate this, I intentionally never have a mat to ensure that my home base is everywhere.

I do give verbal cues (as I wave my hands about wildly), but the words I reach for sound like passionate car manual instructions for how I want them breathing or moving or feeling or using parts of their bodies. So, although I’m speaking, I’m pretty sure my words aren’t as provocative to auditory and visual image learners. And although I demo, non-physical learners might better appreciate a teacher who spent more time on the mat or didn’t touch them at all.

When students have pain or are feeling something in a different place than I expect, it is here perhaps that my learning style serves me and my students most creatively and powerfully. It leads me to get on the floor and try to mimic what I see my student doing to try to recreate their feeling in my own body. From this place, I can start hypothesizing—my learning morphing into my teaching on the spot… and sometimes back again if my hypothesis is wrong.

I’d like to cultivate and integrate other teaching styles into my classroom. In fact, before I wrote this piece I thought I was. But, upon further reflection, I think my teaching would not be as fun or feel as authentic to me if I did. It just wouldn’t feel like me.

We all bring gifts into the classroom. And, happily, the yoga classroom is a special type of classroom—it’s a journey, not a destination. And so for me and for you, it might be interesting, educational, and fun to begin to look at what teaching styles are in action when we feel like our students get the most out of a class. However, this exploration is surely not requisite.

Part of the exciting journey for the student and the teacher is that of finding each other. And this finding can lead to both a resonance with and a broadening of learning and teaching styles. It can feel like coming home, it can push our boundaries or it can be a delightful mixture of both.

We can try to clarify and support in ways that reach more students. But more powerful perhaps, is the recognition that they may just need a different teacher —a teacher with his own unique gifts that compliment his student’s special gifts —a teacher who accepts and revels in both her strengths and her limitations—a teacher who just strikes a pose… and vogues! And isn’t that what yoga is really about?

I invite you now to inspire and share how you vogue to learn, teach and reach others!

1. http://vark-learn.com/introduction-to-vark/the-vark-modalities/
2. http://www.4faculty.org/includes/digdeeper/lesson4/learningstyles.htm
3. https://thinkneuroscience.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/the-myth-of-learning-styles/

Photo by Linda Hartley, used with Creative Commons license