Bird Droppings November 7, 2012

Should it not be about being who we are?

 

It has been nearly eight years since I was directly involved in Foxfire teaching at Piedmont College. One of the Core Principles of the Foxfire Approach to Teaching is the relationship of the teacher to the students. As long as I have been directly or indirectly involved in teaching and education I have tried to approach teaching in this manner. In light of Georgia voters selecting a new amendment to the constitution we will have a new alternative to public education in Georgia. Charter schools are not new and are supported in many counties and school districts. What has changed is now the governor can set up schools outside local school boards authority and use public money to do this. Most people were not paying attention to who was backing this amendment. Most money came from outside the state and from companies that run charter schools for profit. Our governor has received backing from these same groups as well sadly.

 

“The role of the teacher is that of facilitator and collaborator.” Foxfire Teaching Core Principles

 

I recall reading an essay for one of my graduate classes at Georgia Southern University from William Pinar’s book of various essays, Contemporary Curriculum Discourses.  Many are from The Journal of Curriculum Theory, the one that caught my attention was byAllan Block entitled, The answer is blowin in the wind. Block’s thinking is very parallel to the idea from Foxfire that the teacher is also a student, is a facilitator, and most of all is an active participant.

 

“It is by the educative process that students are encouraged to incorporate into their repertoire means by which they might produce knowledge. Education should provide the stimulus for encouraging the student’s development of original means of production. Only the constraints of ideology determine the limits of these techniques.” Allan Block

 

For some time I have used and still have on my wall a quote by Albert Einstein and find myself using it in my morning Bird Droppings quite often.

 

“The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?” Albert Einstein

 

So many times the question of how to get students thinking and processing perplexes me and I am supposed to be the innovative one. I do wonder what some teachers think when I try a new idea or process.

 

“Realness in the facilitator of learning. – When the facilitator is a real person, being what she is, entering into a relationship with the learner without presenting a front or a façade, she is much more likely to be effective.” Carl Rodgers

 

It does not take a great educator and or thinker to know that if we are real people we tend to be more likely believed by students. Yet so often we chose to keep up our façade. I look at this paragraph and can interchange for facilitator the word parent, teacher and or friend very easily. While Rodgers is applying to learning it can also be applied to many aspects of life as well.

 

“Prizing, acceptance, trust. There is another attitude that stands out in those who are successful in facilitating learning… I think of it as prizing the learner, prizing her feelings, her opinions, her person. It is a caring for the learner, but a non-possessive caring. It is an acceptance of this other individual as a separate person, having worth in her own right. It is a basic trust – a belief that this other person is somehow fundamentally trustworthy…” Carl Rodgers

 

Acceptance is a key word as we walk through life. We have to accept others often without being accepted ourselves. I have found this to be a powerful tool in dealing with people not only in teaching but in walking into a grocery store or corner market. Parents need to see their children and I like the word prize their feelings and opinions and or at least listen. We can on occasion be upset emotionally by not being accepted into a group or discussion and it is about moving on and not being hindered.

 

“Empathetic understanding. A further element that establishes a climate for self-initiated experiential learning is emphatic understanding. When the teacher has the ability to understand the student’s reactions from the inside, has a sensitive awareness of the way the process of education and learning seems to the student, then again the likelihood of significant learning is increased….” Carl Rodgers

 

Many the time I have offered empathy as a key to success in any field of endeavor. In teaching it is crucial, in parenting equally as well and in friendship paramount to building and maintaining that continued friendship. That thing I am calling realness, it is truly more trust and empathy making these three simple aspects of life building blocks for relationships that last a week and or a lifetime.

 

“It may include an exchange of ideas, skills, attitudes or values, or even the exchange of things – money, tools or food. Relationships ‘happen’ at all times, in all places, in all parts of society, and in all phases of the development of individuals. We are involved in relationships all the time.” George Goetschius and Joan Tash

 

We are social animals we tend to want to be in groups with others having these relationships as Goetschius and Tash state. If we approach our interactions in a positive light they tend to go farther and become more meaningful.

 

“Humans have social instincts. They come into the world equipped with predispositions to learn how to cooperate, to discriminate the trustworthy from the treacherous, to commit themselves to be trustworthy, to earn good reputations, to exchange goods and information, and to divide labor…” Matt Ridley, The Origins of virtue

 

It has been several years since I played with a theory in the development of trust. I did say humans come into the world with a certain capacity to trust instinctually and that we learn and acquire both trust and distrust and we find this after the fact.

 

“The fundamental purpose of the relationship lies in the fostering of learning in the group or the individual…”  Felix P. Biestek, The Casework Relationship

 

We move beyond where we are at the moment. As a teacher the students learn, as a parent our children learn and with friends learning occurs. So often we perceive learning as book related as school related but learning is an ongoing perpetual lifelong project. We learn to walk due to relationships such as watching others, having others hold on to us as we scoot on our feet. Being fed as a baby is a relationship. Language and speech are both based on example and then practicing.

 

“The whole of life is learning, therefore education can have no endings.” Eduard Lindeman, The meaning of Adult Education

 

From the moment we are born till the moment of our leaving this earthly plain we are about learning. I am always drawn to the idea of Henry David Thoreau giving up teaching to be a learner. What if more of us should do this in our lives? It is about becoming a learner in order to teach, being honest with ourselves, and in who we are. As the world situation is seemingly escalating and the economy according to some crumbling please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and always give thanks namaste.

 

Wa de (Skee)

bird