Bird Droppings January 4, 2019

Caring is a very precious commodity in life

And some thoughts from Maxine Greene

 

As I am pondering my early hours today before getting my day started an article dealing with charter schools and how they exclude many students caught my attention. The air temperature is freezing outside and we are under a slight blanket of clouds much like education is shrouded in this mist of uncertainty, even more so with the current Secretary. We have climbed over the mountain in Georgia in terms of budget cuts and now possible increases in education spending.  I spoke with an administrator recently about their possible retirement, I am a bit disconcerted by discussions and newspaper articles recently across the nation regarding teachers. I have always loved teaching and hurts me to see that education could be on the chopping block with new tax cuts.

 

I have thoroughly enjoyed the recent holidays between grandbabies and family it has been wonderful. Now time to pack up lights and trimmings and get into a new year. Several thoughts have been bouncing around in my head in terms of education. I am back working with high school special education and a couple IEP’s coming up.

 

I have found as I read comments from teachers and administrators that have Facebook accounts there are differing degrees of involvement in this teaching profession. On one hand I find this medium a useful tool while some use solely with a few friends. Younger teachers have a large number of college peers and work related friends, some teachers have former students, and some have student’s teacher’s administrators and professors and numerous others. Reading statuses and updates coming from my psychology background I see many teachers who are concerned and caring people. After being back in teaching fifteen years I find caring is a very precious commodity in life and teaching teachers to care is difficult.

 

“Teaching is to move people to choose differently.” Dr.  Maxine Greene, educator, author and caring person

 

Working in what was once a rural county now not much more than an extension of Atlanta there are many who still adhere to the old ways, politically, religiously, culturally, socially and even educationally. I can write my name that is enough. We experienced an assassination attempt on a sitting Congress Women in Arizona several years back. There was a mass shooting in a school in New England and rhetoric is focusing on the heated debates and arguments over the recent actions of our president. The past stand-off in Oregon had people on both sides fanning the flames. The more recent Las Vegas massacre considered. However it was not that many years ago in my home county people would be lynched, moonshine was the main industry and killing someone and losing a body was part of doing business. Early in the week in my writings I issued a line or two about mental institutions closing and how there were many who twenty five years ago would be residents of said institutions are now in politics, religion, military, jail, homeless and or waiting on the right trigger to set them off. It has been made very clear the individuals involved in the numerous shootings were mentally ill which will play well in various congressional, court and civil meetings, hearings and trials. But how do we teacher’s help children choose differently borrowing from that great educator Maxine Greene.

 

“… Martin Buber had what he called a life of creativity in mind, and also a capacity for participation and partaking. He said that all human beings desire to make things, and what children desire most of all is their share in the becoming of things. Through their own intensively experienced actions, something arises that was not there before. This notion of participant experience- and sharing in the becoming of things- comes very close to what we mean by aesthetic education.” Dr.  Maxine Greene, Educator, Author, Philosopher, Professor and caring person

 

Maybe I should post the Foxfire Core Practices that I have been writing about for several years. I like this idea of participant experience. We need to be actively involved in learning both as teacher and as students.

 

“Not only do we want to keep the aesthetic adventures into meaning visible and potent in the schools, along with the other ways there are of making or achieving or discovering meanings. We want to keep enhancing them with some understanding of contexts- movements, styles, traditions- and connections among diverse works at different modes of history. For one thing, we know very well that none of us comes to any work of art devoid of context or with what has been called a totally ‘innocent eye.” Dr.  Maxine Greene, Educator, Author, Philosopher, Professor and caring person

 

I have watched a new math curriculum wreak havoc with students and teachers and not just in math as math dictates the entire school schedule now. The idea to simplify titles of courses to Math I, II, III, and IV does not do justice to the texts being used or curriculum proposed. Several years ago the test groups failed the first proto type test miserably and continually the curve has to be extreme to provide some passing numbers. The teachers are the same ones who were good and great teachers just a few months back but a simple change in state curriculum and we go backwards. The content needs context and it needs reasons.

 

“I hope you think about the wonder of multiple perspectives in your own experience. I hope you think about what happens to you- and, we would all hope, to our students- when it becomes possible to abandon one- dimensional viewing, to look from many vantage points and, in doing so, construct meanings scarcely suspected before.” Dr.  Maxine Greene, Educator, Author, Philosopher, Professor and caring person

 

I am being hard on the math curriculum but the idea we are so far behind is not a valid one. In the US of all the major industrialized countries we are the only one that mandates education for all children. There is a significant demographic left out of scores which is children who live in poverty. On international testing we tend to be down the list in part because of the greater number of children of all makes and models being tested. There are ideas within Maxine Greene’s words from 2003 that could help a teacher or teachers improve how they respond to students. Changing perspective looking from a different vantage point rather than simply that podium in the front of the room can make a world of difference. A simple thought but world changing.

 

“Our object, where public schools children and young people are concerned is to provide increasing numbers of opportunities for tapping into long unheard frequencies, for opening new perspectives on a world increasingly shared. It seems to me that we can only do so with regard for the situated lives of diverse children and respect for the differences in their experience.” Dr.  Maxine Greene, Educator, Author, Philosopher, Professor and caring person

 

Seeing the differences in children is a sign of a great teacher. For it is in being able to see each child as unique and then in turn being able to, pardon the word diversify the teaching enough to interest all children. That is in and of itself a huge task.

 

“It is sometimes said that ‘all teachers care.’ It is because they care that people go into teaching.” Dr. Nel Noddings, Author, Educator, Professor, Philosopher and a caring person

 

I honestly do think, no one goes into teaching not caring. Somewhere along the line maybe they forget and get too caught up in teaching to the test, making sure they cover every miniscule detail in the curriculum map or just trying to get a good appraisal. As I have watched good teachers and great teachers it is that caring aspect that sets them apart. They tend to build relationships with students. They try to understand why a student comes to school the way they do not just simply give a zero for a missed assignment.

 

“In a caring relation or encounter, the cared-for recognizes the caring and responds in some detectable manner. An infant smiles and wriggles in response to it mother’s care giving. A student may acknowledge her teacher’s caring directly, with verbal gratitude, or simply pursue her own project more confidently. The receptive teacher can see that her caring has been received by monitoring her students’ responses. Without an affirmative response from the cared-for, we cannot call an encounter or relation caring.” Dr. Nel Noddings, Author, Educator, Professor, Philosopher and a caring person

 

Teaching is so much more than a job and if only that were a teachable topic. For many years I have searched for what it is that sets apart the truly great teachers and simplified into one word it is caring. If only we could magnify and personify and spread that word through the world. For far too long I have ended my droppings each day with the same line. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart and to always give thanks namaste.

 

My family and friends I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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