Essential Bird Pedagogy: What do I really think about teaching and education

Bird Droppings August 12, 2026
Essential Bird Pedagogy: What do I really think about teaching and education

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” Dr. Carl Rogers, considered the father of humanistic psychology

Carl Rogers in 1969 published a book, Freedom to Learn. You would think that in a country with mandatory public education, including in 1974, education for all children with the passing of IDEA, that we were free to learn. As I progress in my understanding of experiential learning and John Dewey’s concepts, which are tied to the Foxfire Core Practices and my dissertation, I find that learning is a misunderstood word. Rogers, in his writing, describes two types of learning. Cognitive learning, which he calls meaningless, corresponds to learning in many academic functions that involve memorization, such as vocabulary or multiplication tables. The other type of learning is experiential learning, and Rogers calls this significant learning. The key is that experiential learning addresses the needs and wants of the learner.

“Significant learning takes place when the subject matter is relevant to the personal interests of the student.” Carl Rogers

I titled today’s writing as Essential Bird Pedagogy: What do I really think about teaching and education? Granted, this has been a long time in the making. Seldom do I even use the word pedagogy, which is a favorite of graduate education schools around the country. Vocabulary word number one as you start a master’s or specialist degree. As I think back, I still have never used the word other than in papers being turned in, where sufficient language and vocabulary of the topic were crucial to the structure and format of the paper. As to why it is essential and why I use my own name, pedagogy is so often described as a blanketing sort of word. As an example, a teacher might say my method of teaching falls within the such and such pedagogy from so forth and so on. Pedagogy is how we teach, to paraphrase most definitions. How we teach is a unique aspect of who we are, and borrowing from Carl Rogers, I have often thought you can not teach another person how to teach.

“My experience is that I cannot teach another person how to teach. To attempt it is, for me, in the long run, futile. It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential and has little or no significant influence on behavior. I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered self-appropriated learning.” Carl Rogers

As I am reading Carl Rogers’ words, my current research and undertakings in Foxfire lead me back to Core Practice three of the Foxfire Core Practices.

“The work teachers and students do together enables learners to make connections between the classroom work, the surrounding communities, and the world beyond their communities.”

Can I define how I teach, my method in my madness, perhaps? I started looking at my own history going back in time, and for me, now that becomes a foggy glimpse nearly fifty years back, when I was in school and when I started teaching. All of my early life, our family was involved in teaching swimming and Red Cross lifesaving courses. My father was the instructor trainer for the county, and as we grew up, we went from being students to almost evolving into teachers of swimming. Once you attained a certain level of capability, my father would have you work one-on-one with another less adept student.

“Classroom work includes peer teaching, small group work, and teamwork.” Foxfire Core Practice seven

“I find it very rewarding to learn, in groups, in relationships with one person as in therapy, or by myself.” Carl Rogers

“Cooperative/collaborative learning is interactive; as a team member, you: 1. Develop and share a common goal. 2. Contribute your understanding of the problem: questions, insights, and solutions. 3. Respond to, and work to understand, others’ questions, insights, and solutions. 4. Each member empowers the other to speak and contribute, and to consider their contributions 5. Are accountable to others, and they are accountable to you. 6. Are dependent on others, and they depend on you.” Joseph Landsberger, Study Guides and Strategies

As I came up through high school, I became a Red Cross instructor and taught swimming and Lifesaving through Boy Scouts, Red Cross, and the YMCA. Many of the little tricks of the trade I still use, recalling the idioms and anachronisms of my father’s lessons. Sitting on my front counter are little reminder cards: FIDO, frequency, intensity, duration, and over again. A small card and a simple reminder for students to study, although I would add relevance to the learning process as well. My process of becoming a teacher, while somewhat planned as I participated in training sessions, was very hands-on and something I wanted to do.

I started teaching in 1970 or so, working in Paoli, Pennsylvania, with severely disabled children in a private program, as in that day and age, IDEA was still just a dream. In 1970, many children were not served in public schools. I found it essential to understand the children I was working with, and in those days, research was still very archaic, and for the most part even doctors were recommending residential placement for many of the kids I was working with, as they felt they would never amount to anything anyway. Getting to know a nonverbal child is somewhat of an undertaking and often is an emotional roller coaster. Trying to understand where that child was coming from in their interpretation of the world and how they perceived reality was difficult, to say the least. As I look back, this aspect of concern and caring was critical to my own development as a teacher and my own Essential Bird Pedagogy.

“The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.” John Dewey

My teaching and pedagogical journey took me through several colleges and several more teaching jobs, which eventually took me to Georgia. In 1975, I began teaching in a small program in Warner Robins, Georgia, where I was teaching thirteen Learning Disabled teenagers. I was upset as I was handed first- and second-grade reading books for this group of kids, as several were reading at that level. It was just before this that I found my first Foxfire book in a bookstore in Macon, Georgia. Reading the various stories in the Foxfire book and having through my additional reading and own experiences found that when something is relevant to a student, they tend to learn it far better. I needed new reading material for my students.
It was a Monday when I started with magazines of interest to the kids in my class, and amazingly enough, they went for it. I bought some wrestling, car, hunting, and a girl’s magazine or two for my one female student, although she was a wrestling fan as well, and it changed attitudes and attention spans. By the end of the year, reading levels were up, and my principal was all ready to order more of her reading books when I broke the news to her. I was not fired and actually was offered a raise and would not have to drive the school bus anymore.

“Significant learning takes place when the subject matter is perceived by the student as having relevance for his own purpose.” Carl Rogers

“From the beginning, learner choice, design, and revision infuse the work teachers and learners do together.” Foxfire Core Practice Two

I actually started this essay in 2010 and felt I needed to address it again as I sit here writing about education and thinking of what we truly need to do. You know this may be a several-day effort to describe and define my Essential Bird pedagogy. We are in so many ways hoping for a day when fewer people will be in harm’s way, but today it is still a dream. Please join me in keeping all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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