They say that "good" teachers are life-long learners. I have been doing a lot of thinking about teaching since the end of the school-year, while preparing to teach this course on diversity in the classroom, maintaining/appreciating cultural identity, educational inequity, and teaching in under-served communities. Since I will be teaching New Teachers, I have been reminiscing about my pre-service training with NYCTF, trying to put myself back in the frame of mind I was in before I started teaching, and I have to say, part of me remembers it like it was last week, the utter pit-of-your-stomach-terror of teaching for the first time, combined with the tremendous frustration of navigating the bureaucracy of the Dept of Education and the pending sense of doom combined with this great bubbling excitement that I was about to start something completely new and consuming and different and challenging like nothing I had ever done before.
I remember one of my summer professors asking us to recall the last time we actually were "taught" how to do something new. I put that in quotes because I think most educated adults become self-teachers, and don't really receive instruction on how to do new things, but rather read instruction manuals, do trial and error, follow their instinct, etc... I don't even remember what I said as a response to this professor, but this week came a very timely example of me being the learner and not the teacher.
This August, my brother and I are taking a cross-country road trip to Pasadena, California, where he is moving to pursue a new career/education in Industrial Design. I am going out there partially for the vacation, partially to help him get settled, partially to see some friends in L.A. and S.F. and then fly back to begin my new life as a grad student. The catch: the new car my brother is buying has a standard transmission, and I have only ever driven automatic cars. My first stick-shift lesson was yesterday, with my father, in a Volkswagon similar to the one my brother is buying. We went up to a local high school parking lot in my hometown and I re-lived being 16, practicing for the Road Test, struggling to make the car move smoothly instead of jolting forward and burning rubber and making unpleasant noises.
On the way to the parking lot, he was explaining what he was doing while driving--press down the clutch, shift into first gear, begin to release the clutch and when you feel it "catch" slowly begin to press the gas pedal... When the engine begins to rev quickly and the RPM starts to increase above the 20-mark, you need to shift into a higher gear... give it some gas, press the clutch, shift into second gear, release clutch, more gas... and so on and so forth. I explained to him that I was not sure I could really understand what he was saying to me without actually trying it myself [ahhhh, the value of HANDS ON LEARNING] and that I appreciated him saying it out loud, but without me either A) trying it on my own, B) seeing it in writing, or C) repeating the order of each direction, I would not really learn what he was trying to teach me.
At this point, just before I got behind the wheel, I made the connection to teaching to different learning styles and my instinct was to launch into a full blown conversation about how TIMELY this all was, and how I was going to use it as an example in the class I am teaching starting next week and how I really couldn't remember feeling this unable to do something or struggling to learn anything and it felt bad. Very very bad. But I also realized I was procrastinating in order to put off the challenge of learning.
While the lesson itself went well, after about a half an hour of circling the parking lot, driving up a small back street, turning into a gravel lot and practicing starting up on an inclined surface "without moving the gravel" {my Dad's words], I was exhausted and really wanted to stop. Part of me kept thinking "You want to learn this! You NEED to learn this or you cannot go on your trip!" and the other part of me was thinking "This is hard and I'm tired and I want to stop now because I am not good at this."
I couldn't help but think of how my students must feel when they are struggling with a concept or a skill or a text and the teacher just keeps on going and going forever and the student begins to act out or just refuses to work or goes off task or gives up and how from my point of view, it is a manageable task that the student is perfectly capable of doing, but the student doesn't feel that way and wants to stop. My Dad was fully convinced that after my first lesson I was going to drive him, on the highway [!!] to Costco so he could pick up some things and give me some real road-experience. "Hell no," was my response. Maybe next time.
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1 comments:
totally on point, and it's especially true that the way that this gets dealt with in the schools is a complete farce. did you read that article about the june dance festivals? http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/education/20dance.html?
my school definitely doesn't do that, and i can't imagine why. that's the real argument for learning modalities, i think - it's not about going through the motions of how i was going to teach my fake graduate school unit through an artistic modality (i didn't), but rather getting all of those elements SOMEWHERE into school, so that all kids get to feel like they are extremely good at something at least some of the time.
do you read herbert kohl? 'discipline of hope,' especially - i read it and re-read it despite the fact(or maybe because?) i know he'd probably be horrified by some of the things that i find myself doing in my classroom...
andrew
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