Engaging versus Managing

Last week one of my classes was difficult to manage. I was dealing with resistance due to distaste for the subject area, loss of attention, group dynamics, lack of understanding and inadequate equipment ( some with no pencil or paper). Although I pushed through, my blood pressure rose and I had passing moments of feeling helpless before this morass of learning obstacles. What to do? The next day, I decided to begin with an upbeat, positive attitude, and an attempt to connect with their experience outside the classroom. The tone changed from resistance to cooperation. Could it be that my demeanour the day before was giving off a distancing kind of aura?
It also occurs to me that I need to address the results of the Multiple Intelligence survey I did with them a month ago. The vast majority are primarily wired for bodily kinesthetic learning. They have got to move and feel engaged with movement, rhythm and reconfiguarations of desks...that sort of thing. This week, I intend to keep the students moving...Your comments?

Teaching Manifesto Part Two

6. Without standards, we sacrifice our authority at the altar of low expectations. We set standards, but resist standardization. Relevant standards meet diverse needs fairly. Standardization flatlines needs unfairly. As ethical teachers we challenge blind and deranged standardization that heightens the fear of failure and the lowers the bar of excellence.


7. We believe the caring teacher embraces authority and democracy in the classroom. Authority without democratic transfer of power to our students becomes autocratic. Democracy without the guiding wisdom of teacher authority breeds inefficiency and bad power: bullying, factions, unethical teacher silence and the silencing of minorities.

8. We teach to be aware of and alleviate fear. We commit to overcoming our personal fears that disconnect us from our students. We then address learned helplessness, academic performance anxiety, institutional failure and imposed silence through attentiveness and stress-relieving strategies.

9. We teach to the mind and the emotions, to curricular goals and wellness, to analysis and connection. We care by eliciting and listening to our students’ emotional needs as intrinsic to education.

10. We teach to the spirit. We intentionally and boldly open the universe and its awesome features to our students. We create space for awe, curiosity, beauty and personal modeling. We consciously combat the repressive power of moralism, legalism, factism and groupism. As we engage the spirit, we answer our true calling.

Teaching Manifesto Part One

"The great world, the background, in all of us, is the world of our beliefs. That is the world of the permanencies and the immensities." ~ William James

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A Teacher’s Manifesto

1. We cannot split ourselves into our personal lives and our teaching lives. As we are becoming more whole persons, we are able to teach more effectively.

2. What we believe in theory does not transfer directly to what we do in practice. What we do speaks louder than our declared theoretical constructs. Ethical teachers correct their behaviours with good theory and apply good theory to their practice with the understanding that they are progressing through unfinishedness and beyond. Our subconscious beliefs condition our practice more immediately than our conscious beliefs. When our subconscious and conscious beliefs are not in alignment, we are not fully credible in the classroom.

3. Without the ingratiating attitude of gratitude, the thankless tasks of teaching will lead to teaching without heart. Thankful teachers go the distance in bureaucratic school systems. Thankfulness answers knowledge and happiness with the capacity to embrace our students as gifts, and as gifted.

4. We cannot care unless we are convinced of our own self-worth. A caring teacher chooses to let go of power over students. The egocentric teacher needs power over to prop up the system, his reputation, his sense of control. The caring teacher does not need power over to feed the ego.

5. The teacher with authority is fully present to, with and for students. True authority comes from seeing and feeling from the side of the student. Authority slippage happens as soon as we use power over to hold on to it. Power over imposes the way. Authority points the way.

Spirituality versus Indoctrination

Why do we shy away from engaging in any type of spiritual conversation in the classroom? Is it not largely because we are afraid of indoctrinating? My position is that there is a lot of room for spirituality before indoctrination becomes an issue. Let me define my terms. Spirituality has to do with considering what is beautiful, unexplainable, mysterious, awesome. Creation, art, music, the emotions and some amazing facts of science are pathways to spirituality, where our minds and hearts are turned upward. We exclaim "how can that be?" or "that's amazing, how did that happen!?" Indoctrination imposes a particular set of beliefs on others. Spirituality is open, indoctrination closed.
So I issue the challenge to myself and to my colleagues: let's not be afraid to open the classroom up to the mysteries of life and the universe. These things elevate the mind, inspire the heart, stimulate the intellect. Why back away from educating the soul? We may not be at liberty to answer on our terms the student's spiritual quest, but without the quest itself being set in motion, the answers will not be wanted.  

Boosting Flatline Teaching

There is a certain stability in the expected, and a certain predictability in boredom. Is this what keeps students quietly passive in the linear world of note taking and copying from blackboards and overhead screens? If the controlled atmosphere of scribing on flat surfaces ensures a certain stultifying order of things, then schooling has little to do with being inspired. I find that sidestepping curricular demands can provide a needed boost to a sense of pleasure in learning. An educational game, a conversation about real life, a get-up-and-move-around activity, a rythmic recitation or a song can add depth and colour to the otherwise bland decor of school. In the end, I believe these so-called "unnecessary" activities provide connection and richer meaning to learning in the classroom.

The Power of Evaluation

As teachers we can underevaluate student progress, and we can certainly overevaluate. What are the factors behind these extremes? Underevaluators may not have the desire or ability to synthesize what they've taught. It is difficult to test when you don't have a handle on what you've taught. Overevaluators ( and I was one ) feel they can gain some form of control over behaviours by testing. It is a form of coercion. What's missing in this picture is building a relationship with students so that testing can become a more natural way to gauge their progress. The behaviours may in fact be in part a reaction to the coercion and the negative cycle is then fully engaged between testing, negative reaction and more testing.

Enlarging ethical space

As a classroom teacher, am I mostly concerned about covering the curriculum? If so, my interest in the student can easily take second place to the pressure of getting through it all. I can't just teach whatever I want in the prescribed curriculum. I am accountable to the parents and other teachers. If the student moves classes or schools, it is important that both that teacher and the student be able to pick up where I left off without big gaps. However, what I've learned to do is look over the curriculum and be sure to highlight the essential elements the students will need to both be successful on culminating activities and tests, but also to have sufficient understanding of transferable knowledge to another class or school. So rather than be anxious about covering everything in the textbook, I still have a lot of latitude once the essentials are dealt with. That's when teaching can get relational, especially when I can relax and enjoy the students as people.

Limits of Care

I admire really caring teachers, who know their students personally and encourage them with their kind words and genuine concern. But what are the limits of care? If a student lies or cheats, what does caring intervention look like? In the case that the student is caught in the act, is direct confrontation and issuing consequences uncaring? I would argue not. In fact, the really caring thing to do is to call the student to account while at the same time believing he or she has the ability and the will to change his/her behaviour. Why? First, unless we are caught and stopped, hedged in, as it were, we find ways to rationalize wrongs and even reoffend. Secondly, we have to care enough to challenge and correct, all in the spirit of helping the student be their best. Lastly, without limiting consequences, the student will have the license to be uncaring toward those who are implicated in their lying and cheating.
Let's not assume that students are any different than we are, in essence. We often only redirect wrongdoing toward doing what's right when we are caught and feel the temporary pain of natural or imposed consequences.

Schooling Versus Education

Schooling and education have quite different connotations in my view. Schooling places students and teachers in bureaucratic systems where anxiety tied to performance, performance set to rigid goals, goals imposed by political needs, and needs defined by employability all rule the day.

Education, however, has more to do with curiosity and the motivation to understand, individual goals and developing humaneness in students.

I have chosen to do my best to educate. This choice means more flexible timelines, a less content-driven curriculum (fewer detached bits of cognitive material ) and an openness to my students' own thinking and feelings about life and society.

I would enjoy reading other educators' views on this distinction.