Bird Droppings December 2, 2025
Walking along the way in my journey

I am building up my endurance by walking as much as I can each day. Pat and I are heading to see our North Carolina grandkids in the morning, and I hope to take some serious steps. As I think back on who I am as a teacher and person, I often wonder how I came to be the way I am and why I take such a different outlook from so many teachers in my endeavor. I recall my father teaching me how to teach as a swimming instructor and in various Red Cross programs. Tell, Show, Test, and Check was his favorite ways to teach a subject or skill. I have used the FIDO principle many times over the years: Frequency, Intensity, Duration, and Over again.

As I attended college and began thinking about teaching as a profession, I took courses on teaching and on what to teach to various groups of children and adults. We talked about theory and reality, we practiced, taught, and were observed by professors. I look back and wonder, how does a professor who has never taught outside of college level teach anyone how to teach, say, elementary school-age children? But within it all, I became who I am as a teacher, parent, and person. I see this enterprise as an ongoing continuum, one that is truly never complete. Going back to my favorite Aerosmith quote, which I have used so many times: “Life is about the journey, not the destination.”

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who does not know how to read.” Mark Twain

I spend a good bit of my day reading and find it so hard to understand when I see comments that I do not read or have a favorite book. I may look at ten or twelve books a day, seeking thoughts and ideas for my writing. But to profess not to read, how can you consider yourself even semi-intelligent? For it is through reading that we expand our vocabulary and deepen our understanding of the world around us. It is through reading that we develop and progress beyond where we are today. It is a thorough reading that we move along the journey.

I was speaking with a fellow teacher today about such things. Why do kids not read, for example? Some lack encouragement at home during those hours away from school, and some of the examples set by parents who are not readers. But I think a large portion is our current style of teaching to the test. We are teaching kids to pass tests that affect teachers’ annual appraisals, and, in some cases, even salaries are based on test scores. When we strip significance and choice and mandate memorization of test content, we lose an aspect of who the child is.
Paulo Freire is a radical in terms of education and his outlook on what teaching and education should be about. Freire was a teacher, activist, thinker, innovator, and college professor at various stages of his life.

“As a teacher in an educational program, I cannot be satisfied simply with nice, theoretical elaborations regarding the ontological, political, and epistemological bases of educational practice. My theoretical explanation of such practice ought to be also a concrete and practical demonstration of what I am saying.” Paulo Freire

There is another side of Freire’s philosophy that interests me as well. How much more is gained when you can touch or apply what you are learning? That is very similar to Dewey’s idea that the democratic process is crucial in the classroom and that the teacher is a learner and that learners are teachers.

“In the context of true learning, the learners will be engaged in a continuous transformation through which they become authentic subjects of the construction and reconstruction of what is being taught, side by side with the teacher, who is equally subject to the same process.” Paulo Freire

An ongoing back-and-forth process provides both the teacher and the learner with answers and questions. I once considered this symbiotic process, but as I learned more and looked more deeply, it became osmotic. There was a constant flow back and forth between the teacher and the learner; it was not a matter of relying on one or the other.

“The teacher who thinks ‘correctly’ transmits to the students the beauty of our way of existing in the world as historical beings, capable of intervening in and knowing this world.” Paulo Freire

I wonder how much Dewey Freire read. Many of his thoughts run parallel to Dewey’s, as Dewey saw experience as a critical piece, often left out in teaching. All of the students’ experiences brought to the classroom are bits and pieces that can be built on and added to. I am amused that Freire uses quotation marks around the word “correctly”. How many teachers are teaching correctly in the world? Looking at how a teacher is evaluated in Georgia using a six- or seven-question checklist and relatively simple responses, the process is complex and not conducive to yes-or-no checkboxes.

“It is easier to stick with what teachers have always done and believed, rather than go about the painful process of changing current thinking about teaching,” Charlotte Danielson, from the book Teacher Evaluation, discusses why we continue to evaluate teachers in an archaic model.

We continue to evaluate and judge teachers based on models used since the early 1960s, which tend to focus on ease and the most simplistic methods. Time always seems to be a factor. I am wandering a bit today as I think about where I am on my journey.

“There is no valid teaching from which there does not emerge something learned and through which the learner does not become capable of recreating and remaking what has been taught. In essence, teaching that does not emerge from the experience of learning cannot be learned by anyone.” Paulo Freire

I will have to admit Freire does get deep and philosophical at times. But this aspect of experiencing that runs through his words to me is significant. Many teachers try to keep everything to a minimum in their teaching. I was involved in a discussion about a new math program and was informed that we only want students to learn about functions, not how they work. So students memorize a line on a graph that is this or that, yielding answers A-D, but in effect, they never understand what that is or why.

On the other hand, I watched a watershed model in graduate class. I explained what was happening when rain or excess water affected the surrounding area. Our lecturer was versed in experiential teaching. He builds on teachable moments and hands-on experience. For myself, even thinking back to summers of teaching biology to kids who had failed biology during the regular session, my main objective was to have them pass a comprehensive exam approved by the school and department. We would spend the first hour each day learning vocabulary; I hated it, but without vocabulary, you cannot even read a biology test, let alone answer questions.

After that, we organized and categorized all the trees on campus. We studied hands-on ecology and interactions. We watched various settings, deserts (The Living Desert by Disney Studios), Jungles, and the Arctic (National Geographic films). Occasionally, we would get out one of my ball pythons and talk about reptiles and amphibians. I have had animals living in my room since I started back teaching eleven years ago. Amazingly, all of them passed the finals, and in the three years I taught intersession, only one student quit coming, and it was a family problem. The system changed to seat time, and the criteria and worksheets were the lessons I stopped doing in summer school. It was no longer teaching; it was simply babysitting.

I often wonder about the whys and hows of so many teachers and think back to great teachers, and even to those I consider excellent, even in our high school. Those are the teachers who get kids excited about learning, look for ways to bring life to the lesson, and are always learning. I would consider only a handful of teachers great, as I think back and always have a story or two to share. My middle son had biology in ninth or tenth grade, and a presentation was made. In that presentation, he used an overhead slide he knew was incorrect, and after class, he went to the teacher and told her. At first, the teacher was reluctant to listen until he said, ” My brother has that animal in his saltwater tank, and I am familiar with it. She said she would fix it so it would be right. Several years later, in an advanced Zoology class, the slide and, again, the wrong name and scientific data were attached. This time, being more mature and angrier, he stopped the class and said the slide was wrong. So here is a student who tried to help a teacher who was not interested in learning.

“Why not, for example, take advantage of the student’s experience of life?” Paulo Freire

“A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general principle of the shaping of the experience by environing conditions but that they recognize in concrete what surroundings are conducive to experiences that lead to growth.” John Dewey, Experience and Education

Dewey taught that we need to build on, not exclude, the past experiences in our endeavors to teach children. I have found this to be a critical element in the Foxfire Approach to Teaching.

“New activities spiral gracefully out of the old, incorporating lessons learned from past experiences, building on skills and understandings that can now be amplified.” Foxfire Fund, Foxfire Teaching Approach Core Practice 7

In one of the books I have read several times, A Wolf at Twilight by Kent Nerburn, the discussion of the old method of forcibly taking Indian children and placing them in boarding schools to modernize them and make white Indians is a crucial element. I wonder if we learned anything in looking at how we treat children in schools, even today. We make them live by our rules and standards, imposing guidelines that fluctuate from class to class, often teacher to teacher. Granted, the boarding school days may seem somewhat at odds with today’s schools, but in reality, there is little difference. In a diversified culture, we demand language that may or may not be known. Coming from a special education background, I am always amazed at how we expect poor readers in their native language to read and learn in another. Research shows you cannot, in most cases, exceed the level of attainment in a second or third language that you have in your first.

So I wandered and pondered. This is my reflection for the morning: I wonder and think about what we can do to truly change education as we know it. Freire points to Critical reflection as a means for educators to learn as well as teach. John Dewey and Foxfire both build on reflection.

“In the process of ongoing education of teachers, the essential moment is critical reflection on one’s practice. Thinking critically about practice, of today, or yesterday, makes possible the improvement of tomorrow’s practice.” Paulo Freire

“Reflection is an essential activity that takes place at key points throughout the work.” Foxfire Fund, Foxfire Teaching Approach Core

As I read this morning and thought through my various readings, I wondered whether the commonalities I saw in Freire and Dewey were perhaps things that, as educators, we should be trying to attain rather than so often fighting against. In Foxfire Core practice nine, a thought that has been a key element of any teaching I do is making what I teach relevant and meaningful, so it’s something the child can leave the room with, and that makes sense outside of class.

“Connections between the classroom work, the surrounding communities, and the world beyond the community are clear. “Foxfire Fund, Foxfire Teaching Approach

I often wonder if teaching and teachers would ever catch on and be more concerned with the kids than the content, with the community, rather than the curriculum, and with humanity than with National educational initiatives. So, I will stop, and please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and your heart, namaste.

My friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
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