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Throughout this week and past weekend, I have been reading a lot about labeling in schools, equal education opportunity and social barriers to it, and a lot of problems in schools. Many of them seem unsolvable by schools alone. There is no way to separate society's influences from anything--teaching, education, technology, or science. It feels like such a cage. But is it not the goal of education to help students reach fullest potential in the society they live in? Can schools create new societies? I don't think so.
As a teacher, how do I uphold my morals while still teaching children to function in a society that I consider flawed and needing improvement and unfair and maybe immoral? Do I have any right to impose morals on my students not with intention but merely by living my own code of honor and integrity? Acting in ways that I deem are important for good character? Every author has a voice, and every teacher and every student does too. Do I get to keep my voice as a teacher? Or by entering the profession am I forced into being a certain way?
These are big questions and at this point, I really don't have an answer. I may have an answer I think is right, but is it really right? My answer is every teacher is a unique person and they should embrace that, but sometimes in teacher education I feel peer pressure to not fully be myself because it makes parents touchy. How will I be able to earn the respect of my colleagues if I deny my true self? Do I have to deny my true self in order to earn their respect? How can educators talk about individualized education and respecting each student as the unique person they are if they themselves are asked to fit a certain mold?
I feel that with increased testing, labeling, and top-down management of education, the individuality of both teachers and students is sacrificed to meet societal demands. I do not think this is right. But how can I stand up to this wrong if I get the same impression from fellow colleagues?
One argument from Ayers Ch. 2 is that by labeling students, we demand they learn something they feel no need to learn. My question to this is how can we meet the demands of our job--teaching kids new things they do not know--without making them feel like they are learning something they do not care about and will have no need for in the lives they see themselves leading? Ayers also argues that viewing students as deficit in some area and teaching to fix the deficit leads, unintentionally, to decreased self-esteem. How can we help students learn more without doing this? I get the impression Ayers considers these two negative effects inevitable with the continued pursuit of a deficit model.
Ayers rants about lesson plans again in Ch. 2, arguing that the daily lesson plan embodies the deficit model. I disagree. I view a lesson plan as nothing more than guidelines for the day that can and will be altered to better serve the students' needs. Ayers seems to think that teachers ignore reality for the sake of a lesson plan. This is, of course, ineffective, and I think that many if not most teachers recognize that. Am I wrong? Is the lesson plan really deified in public schools?
Ayers had some great ideas for how teachers can implement regular observation of the whole person in their pedagogy. I think I will try some of them. He also had some good ideas for showing students that you and their fellow classmates appreciate their individuality. However, his idea about bringing in a cultural artifact is not practical for middle school. If you tell a middle school student that we essentially are going to have a show-and-tell, they will feel degraded by the idea. I need methods for accomplishing the same goal in older grades without students being offended. Any ideas? Have you heard of some ways other middle school teachers have accomplished this? Can you refer me to some teacher's blog?
I was having a conversation with my husband last week about what makes teaching so different a profession from others. Since the beginning of this quarter, I have had trouble separating not only my different classes but also my personal and, such as it is, professional life.
It seems like every class I take leads me to upholding the same strong principles of what my mission is as a teacher and how I view science education. It also seems like my personal life and musings are greatly impacted by what I am learning. I have worked very hard at keeping and maintaining the two spheres of my life as separate. I do not let personal problems get in too big a way of work problems and prior to this quarter, I have always been able to leave work and its emotions at work.
My husband defines himself not as a construction manager but as a left-leaning moderate, an environmentalist, a pragmatist, an explorer, a friend, a husband. His work is important to him, but it does not define him at home. My father is a pilot, a retired Air Force officer, but he defines himself as a thinker, a skeptic, a person of faith, a husband and father.
I feel like I cannot separate my private identity and definition of who I am from my role as a teacher. In everything I do, I aim to teach. Be it helping my husband cook or sharing gardening advice with a girlfriend or helping classmates understand how to use compasses and read topographic maps. I am always teaching. What is it about being a teacher that makes it such a crucial piece of my identity? I am a teacher, a wife, a caretaker, a thinker, a skeptic, an Obama-ite, a student, a person seeking faith, an adventurous soul, a lover of learning. I am not just a teacher, but it is a key descriptor of my identity.
From what I have heard from other educators, being a teacher remains part of your identity even after you have taught for decades. Will I ever be able to return to a clear distinction between my personal and professional spheres? I was so proud of that separation. I considered it a strength. And now it seems that I have lost that strength. I have not lost my identity, just the ability to clearly separate two different pieces of my life that, I think, are better separated. If I am struggling now, when I am just learning how to be a teacher, how debilitating will it be when I am actually teaching? Or is it a blessing I don't have the ability to recognize yet?
This week, we had two assignments that asked us to think about why we want to teach. One was a slideshow of images that illustrated why we want to teach. The other was an educational autobiography asking a LOT of questions about what made me feel safe and secure or most at war with my school, the teachers and actions that influenced my view on the role of teachers, the aims of education, and my decision to teach.
I have been asked to write a paper on the pedagogy I plan to implement, but never have I been asked so repeatedly in so many different ways why I want to be a teacher. As I thought about my reasons and experiences that led me to this decision, I learned a lot about what has really influenced my thinking on education and teaching and what I have seen that I definitely do not want to replicate. I thought a lot about what has led me to this path all weekend. And, interestingly enough, my other classes--non-ed classes included--helped me solidify my reasons for teaching.
I am taking a full course load this quarter in order to meet a certain number of post-bac credits to put me ahead a notch on the pay scale. All of my classes are so interdisciplinary I have a hard time remembering which class and its readings and discussions helped me formulate specific thoughts in my brain. It's a strange experience for me. I have never had a harder time keeping what is occuring in my different classes separate.
I do not think this is a bad thing. I think it is a good way to learn, but it is unnerving at the same time. Obviously, I have not experienced interdisciplinary education that is so interdisciplinary before. It is exciting that I see issues raised in all my classes that are relevant in at least one other class. It makes me more motivated to learn to an almost damaging extent. I have found it harder to keep my professional life as a student separate from my personal life and have sacrificed some elements of my personal life in order to learn more about what it is we're studying in class. I hope I develop some new way of controlling myself or I will eventually disappoint my husband.
I have to ask myself though, is this new interdisciplinary experience due simply to the way I am being taught and the way I am learning, or is due more to the fact that I am now viewing education in a different light because I have the lens of a teacher now, not just a student? It could also be that education encompasses so many disciplines, knowledge, methods, and ideas that now that I know how all-encompassing it is, there is no way for me to view new knowledge as separate from the way I view education as a teacher.
Well, my professor wanted me to think and ask hard questions of myself as an educator, and that is definitely happening. It kind of hurts my brain.
Consistently throughout Chapter 1 of To Teach I was struck by how much Ayers descriptions of teaching mesh with my perceptions of parenting. I am not a parent, but I was blessed with two wonderful parents and have had numerous discussions about what it means to be a good parent. I want to be prepared for when I do become a parent, and I like advice from people I consider wise.
Mr. Ayers discussed discovery learning and how important it is for excellent teaching and the first thing that came to my mind was that his description of and zealousness towards discovery learning is like learning via the scientific method--through student-led inquiry, not content lectures. As a prospective science teacher, I am a firm believer that the best way for pupils to really understand science is to do science. There is far too much scientific knowledge to cover in one lifetime, and covering as much content as possible should not be the basis of science education. I see the purpose of my job as a middle school science teacher will be to teach the scientific method, to have kids use the scientific method as the foundation for all studies in science class. It is more important for a person to understand a process than to be able to regurgitate content. It will serve them much better in life and will help the United States maintain a scientific edge if every person who goes through the public school system can use the scientific method. There are infinite possibilities for what a person can learn if they have a process down pat that is based on the precept of learning more. The goal of the scientific method is to learn more, to be a constant challenge to what is considered fact, to help change humanity's understanding of nature and the world. This infinite possibility of learning more and helping others learn more for their entire lives is what attracts me to teaching. If I am able to run my entire science class curriculum via the scientific method, then I will learn new things every year, and that is what will hold me in teaching.
If, however, teaching continues to be deskilled by school administrations as Ayers argues, "Teaching...is constantly being deskilled, made into something to be performed mechanically, without much thought or care, covered over with layers of supervision and accountability and bureaucracy" there will be little to attract anyone to the field. The smartest people in a society (who also have a good personality and passion for teaching) should be the ones educating the children, the future of the nation, not the ones of least intelligence. If teachers continue to be automated via scripted curriculums and other mechanisms, you might as well have a robot lecturing students rather than an individual judging each child's needs, interacting with students and altering curriculum based on perceived needs of students to give each child the best education he/she can. The best teacher is also a good thinker and learner his/herself. I teach because I love inquiry. I am a zealously curious person and I want to share my fascination with all the mysteries of the world with others. I love "some piece of the world enough that" I "want to show that love to others." And I heartily agree that writing a lesson plan is not a difficult thing "an astonishingly simple, entirely overblown, and not very useful skill."
The first word that comes to mind that aptly describes how the preface and first chapter of the book To Teach by William Ayers (yes, that Bill Ayers) made me feel is uncomfortable. The second word that comes to mind is inspiring. The same passion that made Bill Ayers make some harmful choices in his youth makes him an eloquent writer and a one-of-a-kind teacher.
First allow me to comment on the preface. On the second page of this book, an alarming statistic graced the page: "In the last twenty years...California built 21 prisons and one university, Illinois spent close to $400 million on prison construction and nothing on school construction." Mr. Ayers point was that as a society, America is retreating from sustained support for education. I have heard many comments in the media about failing school infrastructure, but I have never before seen any statistic quite as alarming. I had read this part of the preface before my class in the Contexts of Learning and Schooling, but Jan (the professor) said something that reiterated this point. She commented that government has a choice: they can either build schools or build prisons. Support effective teachers or hire more prison guards. Honestly, I have never heard a statement so blunt about the egregious lack of financial support for public schooling in the U.S.
Another statement I found intriguing in the preface follows "A strong democracy requires a thoughtful, engaged, and active citizenry, and an education that encourages critical thought, reception and resistance, participation and empowerment, will push toward a more vital and inclusive democracy." Despite all the doom and gloom about the American public school system, this still sets our schooling apart from every other system in the world: we educate our children in a way that encourages critical thought, participation and empowerment. There are thousands of people across the world who would love to be educated in the U.S. system. There is none other like it in the world. I personally have no experience in another education system, but when I travel to other countries and talk to other hostelers and when I converse with exchange students here in the U.S., at the high school or collegiate level, they all say the same thing. There is no other education system in the world that encourages so much questioning and critical thinking from such an early age as does the American system.
There is a lot of talk about how much better schools in India or China are, how much more aware of global current events and history students are in those countries than in the U.S. That is a very valid point, and I must agree that the American education system encourages an unacceptable level of self-absorption and egocentricism, but there is still something special about the institution. We are in danger of losing that edge, certainly, but I do not think it is for the exact reasons experts say. I do not think that if American children were in school 5 more hours a day like they are in China that our education system would improve or that our students would compete more effectively in our flat world.
Another statement that made me pause was something along the lines of much of our pedagogy has one goal at the forefront, which is to manage the mob. That was no shocking revelation, but the partnered comment characterizing this kind of teaching as "opposite of a calling to the moral dimension" floored me. I had no idea what Mr. Ayers meant, until I read chapter 1, which I will comment about in the next post.
Another perplexing statement that I still don't grasp the meaning of is this: "If we take as our goal the education of all children--or even a gesture in that direction--our system is a failure." I still have not figured out if Mr. Ayers meant that educating all children is a bad goal or if he meant that our system does not succeed at educating all children. Maybe someone will help clear this up in class on Tuesday.
One more unique perspective from Mr. Ayers I am still digesting: "School change is an instance of social change." Hmmm...interesting.
