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Blast from the Past: How to Get Your Teaching Staff to Stop Teaching
by Raymond Crapo

Reprinted from the first issue of NASJE News (vol. 1, no. 1, 1985)

Editor's Note: This article was published in 1985 and authored by Raymond Crapo, who, at the time, was the Education and Training Coordinator of the New York State Unified Court System. The article focuses on Dr. Gordon Zimmerman’s work in the area of training judicial officers not only as teachers but as facilitators. Dr. Zimmerman suggested educators help change how judicial officers usually teach, from a presenter-based philosophy (re-creating law school courses) to a learner-based philosophy (engaging the audience). One of the suggestions given is to move presenters from the teaching mode into the facilitator mode to improve the content and delivery of presentations and engage the audience more. Interesting read…

One of the key presentations made at NASJE's 1984 Annual Conference was Professor Gordon Zimmerman's on the topic of how to improve intructors for judicial education programs. The focus of the presentation was how to make effective and professional teachers out of judges who are specialists in law, rules and procedures. For most states the implementation of Professor Zimmerman's ideas would provide a substantial improvement in their educational programs. The shift from a presenter-based philosphy to a learner-based mode is the key change. To accomplish this change, specific steps must be taken, such as teaching the teachers how to identify and write learning objectives, how to use audio-visual materials as truly complementary supports for learning points and how to "test" the learners during the presentation to be sure the points are understood by all participants.

It might be accurate to summarize the emphasis of the presentation as noting that judicial educators must switch from pedagogy (teacher based) to andragogy (learner based) as their operating philosophy. The quid pro quo for judges who switch to andragogy is that they become skilled in the ways of effective teaching. Representatives of three states — Florida, Kentucky and Michigan — followed Professor Zimmerman and told how they were effecting the switch from padagogy to andragogy in their respective states.

A further analysis of this cogent presentation might have unveiled what is probably the basis for the pedagogical methodology that is all too prevalent in education today. Why do judges typically recreate law school without the socratic method of inquiry when they get together for continuing legal education? Why is the format choice overwhelmingly lecture to large groups with little or no built-in provision for feedback of any sort? Why do judges tend to back up their lecture presentations with pounds of printed material they suspect few in their audience will ever read?

This author would like to suggest the true motivation for this typical set of behaviors is FEAR. Yes, fear. Both program designers and presenters are often motivated to smother the audience with "control" for fear of having to deal with those in the audience who may know more about the topic than the presentor and/or those who may ask a question the presenter cannot answer. Worse still is the lurking possibility that someone in the audience may come up with the citations that were not made by the presenter but could have been and even should have been utilized. The best tactic for handling the presenter's fear is to smother the audience with lecture, no matter how diverse and varied the knowledge and experience base of members of the audience.

Before you rush to disagree that the above is the premise of many presenters and programs, allow the author to broaden the basis on which it is made. It is submitted that this is the normal reaction of most presenters in most professions. Taking off his judicial educator's hat and putting on his professorial one at New York University's Training and Management Development Diploma program, the author feels that the observable behaviors of the typical teacher/trainer are identical to those of typical teaching judges. One of the key emphases of the university's program is to have program participants overcome their fear by switching them form the teaching mode to the facilitation mode of presentation. (My esteemed collegues from the New York Judiciary's Education and Training Unit wryly note that "facilitation" is a crime defined under the Penal Code. Obviously, the use of the the word for judicial eduators is under a substantially different definition!)

The frist objective for judicial educators is to follow and do what such states as Connecticut, Arizone, Florida, Kentucky and Michigan are doing — make your judicial educators into good teachers. A second objective occurs when the very good teachers mature into facilitators.

A facilitator is a group leader who, when working at the top level, would appear to be doing nothing. Facilitators are responsible for subtle and highly sophisticated learning experiences based on learning points but completely participant-based operation. They are far beyond overcoming fear; they seek an bring out people who know more than they do about the subject at hand. A facilitator's first rule is: "Never teach an adult something he or she already knows."

Facilitators subtly and frequently test participants to find out what they do know. If participant knowledge is at a high level throughout, the facilitator moves the group to the next learning objective. If one, several, or a significant part of the group lacks the knowledge sought, a facilitator encourages other members of the group to provide the knowledge from within the group. the facilitator then — and only then — teaches. He or she teaches for as short a time as possible until the members of the group "aha" and indicate to the facilitator's satisfaction that they know what they need to know about the learning objective. This is determined by any number of either subtle or overt "tests." The facilitator then moves on to the next learning objective.

Sound exotic? This should be your ultimate direction in educator staff development. It is the best utilization not only of your judges as educators but of your judges as learners. It is learner-based (and even appears to be learner-led) with continuous communications feedback during each session.

To obtain the maximum immediately measurable education for your limited dollars, the first thing to do is to make your judicial educators professional teachers as Professor Zimmerman and the panelists explained. When they became professional teachers, your next stop on the road is to make them facilitators. Getting your teaching staff to stop teaching and start facilitating will bring your programs to a level of sophistication and excellence so high that you will have an explosive growth of learning and a professional faculty that will thrive on being judicial educators because they have replaced fear of groups with absolute trust in them. Your judges will respond to that manifestation of trust by becoming open and honest learners — asking a lot more questions, freely admitting blind spots in their legal knowledge — unafraid to admit they may not be perfect in their knowledge of law, rules and procedures.

Should you be able to get your judge educators to teach well now, you can look forward to development of the best of them into facilitators in three to five years.

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