Teacher Man
We were discussing Frank McCourt’s newest book on his experiences as a high-school teacher in NYC today and we came around to the question — So why do it? Why teach? What made me and my students sign on to teaching as a career choice? McCourt makes the incredibly important point that you should do what you love and I do, I love this — but what’s the underlying point to it all? What do I believe about education and my relationship to and with my students and how this thing all works?
We write, as faculty, a philosophy of teaching statement each year and while that could be just an academic exercise, I took the plunge and wrote what I really believe. Here’s what I said:
Over this past year, my challenges were many and they all came back to one thing – how to connect what I taught my students to their lives in such a way that they found it meaningful enough to remember and use it in their own teaching. I am still pushing them to get engaged, to take on higher levels of inquiry and responsibility, and to move from passive to active learning. Many of the ways that I do that come back to how I integrate new technologies and their new literacies into the course. Sometimes it means simply getting to know my students better. All in all, my teaching is shaped by the curiosity my students and I bring to the class each session, and between them – for the subject and for learning in general. The best teaching fosters that curiosity long after the class has ended, and that’s what I am working to achieve.
November 21st, 2006 at 2:54 am
I do appreciate that…