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January 16 - January 31, 2017
To those who say that we need weights and measures in order to enforce accountability in education, my response is, yes, of course we do, but only under three conditions that are not being met today. We need to make sure (1) that we measure things worth measuring in the context of authentic education, where rote learning counts for little; (2) that we know how to measure what we set out to measure; and (3) that we attach no more importance to measurable things than we attach to things equally or more important that elude our instruments.
Who does not know that you can throw the best methods, the latest equipment, and a lot of money at people who do not trust each other and still get miserable results? Who does not know that people who trust each other and work well together can do exceptional work with less than adequate resources?
it becomes impossible to claim that all good teachers use similar techniques: some lecture nonstop and others speak very little; some stay close to their material and others loose the imagination; some teach with the carrot and others with the stick. But in every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work. “Dr. A is really there when she teaches,”
“All real living is meeting,” said Martin Buber, and teaching is endless meeting.
Buechner offers a more generous and humane image of vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
“It is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country . . . we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. . . . At that moment, we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver to the depths of our being. We come across a cascade of light, and there is eternity.”
It means making space for the other, being aware of the other, paying attention to the other, honoring the other. It means not rushing to fill our students’ silences with fearful speech of our own and not trying to coerce them into saying the things that we want to hear. It
But many of us have another fear that we rarely name: our fear of the judgment of the young.
“the highest form of love, love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.”
To become a better teacher, I must nurture a sense of self that both does and does not depend on the responses of others—and that is a true paradox.
1. The space should be bounded and open. 2. The space should be hospitable and “charged.” 3. The space should invite the voice of the individual and the voice of the group. 4. The space should honor the “little” stories of the students and the “big” stories of the disciplines and tradition. 5. The space should support solitude and surround it with the resources of community. 6. The space should welcome both silence and speech.
Third, good education may leave students deeply dissatisfied, at least for a while. I do not mean the dissatisfaction that comes from teachers who are inaudible, incoherent, or incompetent. But students who have been well served by good teachers may walk away angry— angry that their prejudices have been challenged and their sense of self shaken. That sort of dissatisfaction may be a sign that real education has happened.
thought I probably knew, because we do not usually take someone to lunch to tell about our failures. But
I had run out of lecture that morning with an hour left to go, and I needed the help of those students if our encounter was to be worthwhile.
Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique: good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.
Good talk about good teaching is unlikely to happen if presidents and principals, deans and department chairs, and others who have influence without position do not expect it and invite it into being.
Becoming a leader of that sort—one who opens, rather than occupies, space—requires the same inner journey we have been exploring for teachers. It is a journey beyond fear and into authentic selfhood, a journey toward respecting otherness and understanding how connected and resourceful we all are.
