Teaching

You can probably remember a teacher who touched your life in a positive way at some point. Perhaps it was a third grade teacher who patiently helped you understand what the commutative property of multiplication was. Or maybe it was a fifth grade teacher who was passionate about literature and always found a way to help you make every story come to life. Or it might even have been a high school history teacher who dressed up in period costume for classes about the civil war.

Have you gone back to your school to thank that teacher?

There is nothing quite like the feeling that comes from being a good teacher; whether it's guiding children to a better understanding, sharing one's passion for a particular topic, compensating for a child's tough home life by caring a little bit more, or helping a student develop a growth mindset when they say they'll never understand fractions. Being part of a classroom full  of children for a year is an amazing experience.

It's not easy though, if you want to do it right. It' not something you can do by reading a book, taking a single course, spending a year in a classroom with a practicing teacher or just doing what comes naturally. Being a good teacher and getting the most fulfillment out of it involves a rigorous, challenging but incredibly rewarding intellectual process of thinking, reflecting, acting and developing the professional dispositions of a teacher. It involves having a good understanding of what you will teach, a practical grasp of how children develop and learn and the accumulation of a toolbox of teaching strategies you can call upon when needed.

A great place to do this is in the undergraduate or graduate programs at St. Michael' College where theory and practice are integrated in a way that enables you to be the best you can be.      

   

Theory and Practice and Practice and Theory.

Learning to teach is one of those things where you need both theory and practice. Yes, some people may be born teachers but in order to teach in an institution such as a school there is so much more to learn than the simple act of teaching; say teaching a child to tie his shoes.

There are theories of learning, epistemologies of disciplines, management techniques and  and something like 2000 pedagogy and content standards that have to be mastered at the elementary school level.

In the undergraduate Education programs at St. Michael's College where stduents can ultimately obtain a license to teach the role of theory and practice and the interplay between them are taken very seriously. From the very first Education course, students get to experience what it is like in a public school classroom. They get opportunities over and over again to experience what it  is like to work with young children based on a  solid grounding in theory in their coursework.

Over the years I have experienced all kinds of variations to this theme both directly and through the stories and experiences of colleagues. I once had a prospective student ask me which 3 credit course she needed to take to become an elementary school teacher. I've had students ask me if they can do their Education courses as independent studies and other students who said they didn't have time to fit in the field placement attached to a a course. I remember a story from an old  friend from graduate school I met recently who was teaching in a small college in the Mid-west who said she had a student who was so poor in her student teaching experience that she was going to fail her until her program director discovered that she was a member of a family with which the director had a  lifetime of close ties. The student teacher was just unable to put theory into practice, she said.

This last example is what I mean by "Mind the gap", a famous sign on every underground station in  London. There is, of course a gap between theory and practice; just like between the train and the platform, that the student must negotiate with the help of her/his supervisor. I remember another student I was supervising in Illinois many years ago who, in the middle of reading a sotry to a class of first grade students, put the book down, burst into tears and said "I just can;t do this". She was a straight A student in her coursework but just could not negotiate the gap.

So when I'm working with anyone who wants to become a teacher I'm always aware of the gap that exists between theory and practice but also very aware that you can't have one without the other.

Being a Student - Becoming a Teacher

The transformative learning theory of Jack Mezirow has always seemed to me to be  the most compelling piece of adult learning theory upon which to base one's approach to teacher education. I must admit, though, that I have always seen its application as being more appropriate for my graduate students where, for many of them, the process of becoming a teacher is a significant change in their lives in the context of what they are currently doing.

Recently, however, I have begun to see where this theory applies to undergraduate students as they make their way through the four years of undergraduate education. I have always perceived, and treated, the undergraduate students I work with as adults so it seems logical to apply a theory of adult learning to their passage from being a student to becoming a teacher.

One of the primary tenets of tranformative learning is the idea that  it consists of "critical self-reflection and disorienting dilemmas to make cognitive adjustments to reframing one's world". There is a clear distinction between first year students who are exploring the teaching profession through introductory classes and those who are set to graduate having completed their student teaching experience; at least with those who have been successful. It's not just the fact that they are four years older but something far more complex and meaningful. At some point, for most around the middle to the end of their junior year, they no longer seem to be students attending classes. They have become pre-service teachers learning how to become teachers. Their levels of motivation and curiosity change; they begin to take ownership of their learning. The field experiences they have become sources of self reflection and disorientation from which they construct new outlooks on who they are and what they can do. They become "authors" of themselves as described in the introduction to transformative learning from the website linked above;

"Transformative Learning is a theory of deep learning that goes beyond just content knowledge acquisition, or learning equations, memorizing tax codes or learning historical facts and data.   It is a desirable process for adults to learn to think for themselves, through true emancipation from sometimes mindless or unquestioning acceptance of what we have to come to know through our life experience, especially those things that our culture, religions, and personalities may predispose us towards, without our active engagement and questioning of how we know what we know." 

"For us as adults to truly take ownership of our social roles, and our personal roles, being able to develop this self-authorship goes a long way towards helping our society and world to become a better place through our greater understanding and awareness of the world and issues beyond us, and can help us to improve our role in our lives and those of others."

Isn't that neat!

I Want to be a Teacher

During exam week I always meet individually with the students in my Schools and Society course to see how their plans of becoming a teacher are going. It's a chance for me to give the students some individual feedback as well as an opportunity for them to ask questions and give me ideas.

The course is the first in the sequence of  courses they need for either elementary of secondary teacher licensure and is an opportunity for them to get their first teaching experience as well as begin to develop their ideas about what type of teacher they want to become.

For some, it is an exploration of whether they really do want to teach. Sometimes, growing up through our teen years we hear so many times "how good we are with young children"  or how we have a  "knack for remembering dates; you should teach history" that we think our chosen livelihood must be to teach.  For some they have always loved math or art and want to share their passion, while for others it is the thought of being part of the wonderful developmental phases of childhood that draws them on.

This semester the course has been filled with  a truly remarkable group of young men and women all with a  genuine passion for life whether it be teaching or, as in one case, journalism. There isn't a single student in the course who, I think, should reconsider their choice of career. In fact, there have been many students who I think will make a meaningful contribution to the teaching preofession in years to come.

The most important characteristic the students seem to share is that none of them see the task of becoming a teacher as a "spectator sport". They have all been actively engaged in their learning through the learning communities we set up in the class as well as their participation in the field placements. The cooperating teachers' evaluations of the students were wonderful.

In the current economic uncertainty it has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with a group of students with such a genuinely positive outlook on life.

A Calling, Perhaps, But So Much More

'Tis the time of year for reading students' philosophy of teaching papers in my ED231 Schools and Society class. The thought of reading twenty 10 - 15 page papers is always more than a little daunting but once I start I realize why it is such a great experience. For this assignment the students have to write a single paragraph identifying the major contributions to the field of Education of 25 of the Great Eudcators included on the Great Educator webpage. Several years ago I asked all 13 of my colleagues in the Education Department who the greatest influences were on their approach to Education; hence the men and women who appear here from the past 150 years.The students are then required to select the five they most identify with a write their first philosophy of teaching based on these five Great Educators. (The students help me construct this webpage every semester by finding the links)

In each student's paper there is at least one pearl of wisdom or, perhaps, tweetable statement, and often many more, that makes me think about learning and teaching differently; a new perspective, a new idea, a new phrase, something that causes me to think and learn. In one of the papers I read today, the student introduces very eloquently a series of events and thoughts that set him on the path to being a teacher. I described this, in the comments I wrote on the paper, as his "calling" and suggested that now the rest is up to him.

Over the years, teaching, like nursing, has been identified as a calling, a vocation, even something one 'has been born' to do. It may be any of these but it is so much more. We have read some pretty great writings   about teaching this semester including To Teach, a book by William Ayers who, as one of the students pointed out, was once on the FBI's Most Wanted list. What is so interesting about Ayers' still somewhat radical  ideas about teaching (there should be an element of "creative insubordination" in all teachers) is that he is, in a way, confirming our cultural belief that teaching is, in fact, a calling in its purest sense.

Once one has been "called" however, there is so much to do, so much to know, so much to understand and so many opportunities to be seized. This is where the pre-service teacher, the college student, can really become an active participant in the process of becomeing a teacher; a caring and passionate student of the art of teaching. 

Teaching Can Run in the Family

Like many other walks in life teaching can run in the family. I know many teachers whose parents were teachers and whose children are teachers. I also know many teachers who come from families where there are no other teachers too. I got into teaching because the field hockey team I played on at weekends was composed almost entirely of teachers. It was a mixed team, 6 men and 5 women players and we were called the Jackdaws. At the time I was a Quantity Surveyor but didn't really like it. So I quit my job and went off to college at 21.


There are lots of reasons why we become teachers. Some get into it because they love being around children while others want to change the world. Some like the idea of the long summer vacations while others love a particular subject such as math or english. There are those also who like the idea working with specific populations of students such as English language learners or students with special needs.

Whatever the reason, it's important to explore that reason and there's no better way than getting classroom experience in a public school on the "other side of the desk". In my case, I certainly didn't become a teacher because all teachers like field hockey, but being around teachers and hearing them talk about their jobs sewed a seed of curiosity that I followed until I had gained enough classroom experience that I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life.


That's my daughter Marie and son Andrew in the picture about 4 years ago trying to stop me from watching a St. Mike's women's basketball game. My daughter is now getting her graduate degree in special education at St. Mike's and my son works one day a week in Alliot, the college cafeteria. Although he graduated H.S. this past summer, because he has a disability, Down Syndrome, he has four more years of H.S. eligibility during which time he will work part-time jobs such as serving food at Alliot.