BereaCollege

Department of Education Studies

EDS 200 Thinking about Education

February 21, 2006

What does it mean to teach?

The Meaning of Teaching

The following reflects teaching in democratic classrooms!

Teaching (What does it mean to teach?) is always undergirded by sound knowledge, skills, dispositions, and a commitment to make diversity inseparable from how we make meaning, how we are as human beings, and how nature and the universe are constructed. It is characterized by a profound love of children/students, and teaching ALL children to help ALL children learn; in reality,it is a vocation grounded in caring and democracy!As such, multiple skills are required and myriad dispositions in order to address multiple and complex experiences and learning possibilities that will be part of classroom dynamics and the pedagogical process. Moreover, teaching requires profound identity and integrity, which, essentially,both define who a person is. If a person does not know who she/he is, then that person lacks identity and integrity making the art of teaching impossible to foster learning. Teaching combines knowledge, skills, and dispositions to make learning at a high level possible, because ALL KNOWLEDGE IS CONNECTED/ INTERCONNECTED. Suffice it to say teaching is fundamentally a social process that involves complex social processes connected by shared beliefs, ideas, and communicated through language. Teaching is an interdisciplinary enterprise, since it draws on multiple disciplines to make learning and education more meaningful and purposeful. Teaching is empowering and it thus makes learning empowering, which means that it can create agents of change.

Based on the fist theme, the respective authors elaborated extensively on the three categories: Knowledge skills, and dispositions. Some examples from each reading are outlined below.

“The Heart of a Teacher” by Parker Palmer

Knowledge / Skills / Disposition
Self-knowledge is critical
Good teaching comes from identity and integrity.
Know subject and content
Know your identity.
Teaching and learning involve caring.
Teaching and learning involve engaging the soul.
Aspire toward wisdom
Background and culture are at the center of experiences.
Teaching and learning is a baffling vocation.
The self is not infinitely elastic—it has potentials and limits.
Teaching is done at a dangerous intersection of public and private life.
Power is usually external
Authority lies within us
Knowing how to reclaim one’s identity and integrity brings about authority. / Develop the art of self-criticism.
Teach to engage the soul
Communicate effectively
Teach to reflect identity and integrity.
Teach ALL students—help ALL students learn!
Put yourself in your teaching
Appropriate dress and appearance
Include students, self, and subject
Connect things! Objective is not separate from the subjective.
Teach to reclaim hearts
Use dialogical methods
Measure the value of inner dialogue.
Tactfully use external power.
Use one’s authority to bring about learning.
Use multiple strategies to help all students learn.
Be versatile / Have humility
Be sensitive and open-minded
Be fair and just
Show your soul
Be self-critical
Be caring
Have and manifest/show identity and integrity
Care about what one teaches
Have a sense of humor
Understand vulnerability
Reclaim hearts
Be reflective
Attend to the voice of the teacher within (23). (reflection)
Ability to navigate inner dialogue.
Have heart

“The Mystery of Teaching” by William Ayers

Knowledge / Skills / Dispositions
“THE WORK OF A TEACHER—exhausting, complex idiosyncratic, never twice the same—is, at its heart, an intellectual and ethical enterprise. Teaching is the vocation of vocations, a calling that shepherds a multitude of other callings. It is an activity that is intensely practical and yet transcendent, brutally matter of fact, and yet fundamentally a creative act. Teaching begins in challenge and is never far from mystery” (26).
Teaching involves finding allies
Experience is at the core of teaching and learning
Teaching involves balance and clarity
The community and residents are also part of the school community. / Creative insubordination
Develop ability to engage in Criticism/self-criticism
Find allies
The ability to learn from your own experience
The ability to link consciousness to conduct
Ability to develop authentic friendship
Ability to balance and clarify / Thoughtful and caring
Values humane and child- centered education
Has a set of core values
Sets high expectations for learners
Is respectful
Compassionate, and values curiosity
“Teachers would strive to create a classrooms where people can think and question freely, speak and write and read critically, work cooperatively, consider the common good and then act accordingly”(34).

“Passionate Teaching” by Robert L. Fried

Knowledge / Skills / Dispositions
Knowing what is at the heart of the subject you are teaching
Knowing critically literacy
Teachers are partners in the learning process.
Knowing that teaching is a complex process
Teaching involves learning at the same time / Ability to connect classroom learning to the real world
Ability to know what is important to teach in subject area
“are always relating-and helping their students relate-learning with living, inviting students to forge their own meaning in the confrontation between life in school and life ‘out there in the real world’”(49).
Teach and learn at the same time.
Build confidence and competence among students. / Teachers should bring passion to their work
Love of learning
Devotion to learning
Caring towards students and who they become
Values active student participation
Less concern with letter grades and more emphasis on a performance based approach to learning
Views student teacher relationship as partners in learning
“the act of teaching has more to do with preparing a learner to be an eager seeker of new skills that with nailing down pertinent data”(47).
“passionate teachers share their commitment to active learning by showing, not telling”(48).
Willing to take risks
Being emotionally alive.

“Reading the World/Reading the Word” by Paulo Freire

Knowledge / Skills / Dispositions
Intellectual experience is critically important.
Teaching and learning require constant preparation.
Teaching and learning draw on experiences.
Readers’ level of intellectual development is important to construct meaning.
“I understand that these relationships between conscience and the world are dialectic” (60).
“A critical reading of the texts and of the world has to do with the changes in progress within them” (60).
Theory and practice are inextricably connected. / Teach to bring about learning.
Constantly prepare
Draw on experiences
To prepare for “learning, studying is before anything else a critical, creative, re-creating activity” (53).
Critical thinking does not dichotomize things into separate parts, it synthesizes all things to make knowledge richer, which enables us to read both the word and world at the same time. Contexts are always brought in.
Intellectual ability
The teacher must always connect theory and practice.
Teaching is empowering—helps students construct knowledge.
Studying is preparation for knowing.
Reading and writing are inseparable.
Learning to socially construct—reading and writing are inseparable.
Take critical ownership of the formation of ourselves.
Act creatively
[TEACHING IS NOT ABOUT GIVING STUDENTS KNOWLEDGE, GIVING THEM EDUCATION, ETC.—SEE ABOVE. AVOID USING SUCH LANGUAGE!] / Humble and open-mindedness
Patience
Perseverance
Being humble
Value critical thinking
Be intellectually curious
Be creative

“Teaching as Possibility” by Maxine Green

Knowledge / Skills / Dispositions
Humanbeings must have agency in order to be learners.
Teaching and learning involve having imagination
Teaching and learning involve reflectiveness
Teaching and learning are about taking responsibility.
Teaching and learning must aim to empower
Teaching and learning is a democratic process.
Authentic communication and dialogue are important to bring about significant learning, trust, etc. / Develop agency
Develop imagination
Develop the power of reflectiveness
Create democratic classrooms
Communication and dialogical skills
Teach to awake and empower / Display agency
Display imagination
Be reflective
Be imaginative
Be responsibility
Be democratic
Be dialogical
Be empowering and awakening