Lessons Learned From A Wheelchair

In the spring of 2006, I had surgery on my left foot. My foot was in a heavy boot and I could barely walk with crutches so the obvious solution was to use a wheelchair at school. I have often referred to the experience of teaching from a wheelchair as one of the the most difficult challenges I have ever faced. Thankfully, I had a student teacher at the time who covered more than half of my classes. But there were a few classes I was left with while she worked in another room.

My regular practice is to be up on my feet, constantly moving around the room or teaching from the board, pointing and writing. In the wheelchair, I could barely reach enough of the board to write on and standing, even with my leg resting on a chair, was quite painful. So several times, when going over math problems and teaching new concepts, I would ask for a volunteer to go to the board to do the writing while I talked.

There was no shortage of volunteers and I wanted to keep it that way. I tried very hard to verbally describe what I wanted my volunteer to write, while explaining the math procedure to the class. It felt like it was a painfully slow process, and at first I worried that those poor students must be bored to tears. But really, the opposite was happening. They were sharing in the responsibility for their own learning, and I had slowed down enough that it was easier for them to grasp and retain the concepts I was trying to teach.

I had listened to various lecturers make the point that teachers needed to allow more lag time after questions and when explaining new concepts, and now out of necessity, more lag time was built in. The students were responding beautifully to my slowing down and learning was increased.

I am happy to say that I no longer need a wheelchair. It was a tool that served its purpose at the time, but I was thrilled to send it back. I have tried to incorporate what I have learned from that time into my daily instruction. I ask a question, and instead of calling on someone right away or answering it myself if there are no volunteers, I take a long sip of water. Sometimes after posing a problem, I take a walk around the classroom before I call on anyone, telling them to just think about it until I get back to the front of the room.

I also look for ways to get students to share the responsibility for their own learning. I try to emphasize how they can do this and encourage them when they do. Sometimes it is having them do a self-correct, help a peer, or make an informative presentation to the class. I never would have thought that being in a wheelchair would help me in any way to be a better teacher, but it certainly did.