I feel

a little overwhelmed at the moment. Right now I feel like I can't really do everything with the integrity I would like to. I can get close, but something's gotta give. Just a little, and maybe not importantly. (like an A- would be so bad. Wow, look at me and my instructionalist folk pedagogy!) I wonder if school isn't about that though sometimes. We shake ourselves up in school. We force our attention into new places. Maybe having many different tasks to do less than perfectly well is what I need right now. Delving deeply has it's place. Education can be about the act of searching. That act makes you nimble and ready for specific challenges.

The next level I'd like to take it to, my goal in this course, is to see if I can improve on engaging my colleagues and pulling many voices into a thread. It would be nice to have fewer threads going. Maybe a one thread week. It seems that, by the time I read and post, and respond to one other post I'm pressed by time and need to get into another thread. I think a blog becomes truly exciting after credit is earned. I miss the deep discussion that might follow.

(What is) Learning, Knowing and Teaching?

Here's what I wrote as a response to these questions in class:

Learning is growing. Growing is what we do. At first growing is physical. Our bodies gain strength and balance. Our minds gain capacity and efficiency. Eventually these faculties plateau and then slowly ebb. Yet through our lives we continue to grow. Our knowledge grows with information such as, what mushrooms to keep out of reach of our children. We grow emotionally and become ever more sensitive to the way we speak to others. Indeed, we grow throughout our lives. This is learning. Sometimes people grow in unpleasant ways and sometimes they adapt to one or another pursuit extremely well. Everyone learns all the time though. It’s a natural process. It’s unavoidable.

Knowing is a fact, definition or idea that one puts their entire faith in. It might be that you’ll fall if you go over a visual cliff. It might be what not to say to a bully. Some things we know may not be true. Many things are.

Teaching is role modeling and attempts to implement processes of sustained discipline which are easy to follow for a deliberate learner.

The people in the course expanded upon these definitions. Mary Beth commented that learning has to do with expanding on previously gained knowledge. There was an interesting discussion of the social nature of learning.All in all I feel that the theories of learning that we have been reading about reinforce and give voice to what we talked about and what I have been feeling about teaching for a long time.

If the premise that, "We teach as we were taught" is true then I am a progressive educator. I went to The New Lincoln School, a progressive school in NYC, since folded unfortunately. It was not so well funded and it was still very traditional in major ways, but there was a respect for the young individual there. I called teachers by their first name, not always but often. Now, I'm known as Dan (the music man) where I teach. I also went to an arts Camp called Bucks Rock. This was a place run completely on Montessori principles. You had your choice of activities ranging from fully functioning shops for metal smithing (my nieces specialty now!), sculpture, glassblowing, ceramics and more. The place also featured folk and classical music programs, theater and dance. There was almost no scheduling. Kids just had to do something. If that was hang out on the hill and blow off everything, so be it. You just couldn't be at your bunk sleeping. It worked. Positive peer pressure set in and silly suburban kids became true badasses. I went there and then I TAUGHT there.

I've Been Thinking About Teaching

I can't do anything not my own way. Well, I can but it's not something that I'll do particularly well. This has been something that has informed my work and shaped my teaching from the start. I've always felt that work should be fun but I don't like the word fun. Fun is a box of macaroni and cheese. Work is deeper, richer and fuller than fun. True work is utopian. The true worker is the one who needs to keep himself sleeping until 5am for fear of running out of energy later in the morning. Very few of us get to do our true work as our job. Some get to do something valuable and I consider myself lucky to be in this group. Still, as a job it is not necessarily always reflective of my true work or my true self. How can I do a great job, still, given my overarching desire to always be working to my fullest realization of that term. I guess I find inspiration in helping my students see the difference between chores, jobs, and work. There is no work without chores and jobs.

Here's what I said to the six students in my advisory when school started this year. As I looked at my overwhelmed students looking down the barrel of about 176 school days I explained that these days were out of about 300 until next summer vacation. That leaves about 124 days with no school. After that there are about 65 strait days off. I explained that, in a typical school year, non school days out number school days by about 13 days (189 to 176). That leaves plenty of time for doing exactly what you like. But there's more. Every school day is only 7 and 1/2 hours. Assuming, 8 hours of sleep (quite an assumption) that leaves 8 and 1/2 hours of time every school day for doing exactly what you like (minus some homework time). But there's more. Out of those 7 and 1/2 hours of school there is lunch, recess, PE, art, music, other electives, and study hall. Time for leisure, fun and for them to make choices. That leaves a few hours a day for intense concentration on difficult core skills. Can you put this relatively small amount of time into a context where it improves the quality of your true work? I mean, Michael Jordan had to do his pushups right?

Anyone needs a sense of where they are headed and needs to feel good about it. They need to know, not that they're always going to have fun, but that their job or chore at any moment is contributing to the richness of their life. Mostly people need to feel that they are free. Free to do as they please, to follow their own path, and to express themselves through their life's work.