I have just had my first tutorial sessions with two classes of first year pre-service teachers in the B.Teach program. Our unit is about developing a professional identity and developing critical reflective practice. One of the first readings, from Parker Palmer suggests that "we teach who we are" and we need to be prepared to be vulnerable and to develop our inner life. "Teaching is the intersection between the public and the personal life." We need to own all of who we are, including our fears, so we can be authentic in the classroom.
In this post I reflect on the first tute. This seemed to go exceptionally well; ending with a sense of high yet supportive energy; a sense of commitment to being "awake learners" and many of the students thanking me and saying how they valued my own humilty. I probably wouldn't have bothered deconstructing this too much if I hadn't experienced the second tute which I talk about in the next post. I went home after the first tute feeling that to teach teachers felt like my true vocation. After the second, I felt extremely humbled and doubting.
Description of the Incident (with some explanations of my reasons, and emerging questions)
A "learning objective" of the first lesson?
To create the beginning of an evolving community of practice...
My aim in creating a classroom culture in my tutes is not just a place where we can talk about the ideas from the lectures and readings, but where we can try them on, and be able to put on different teacher identities and see how they are fitting. How can I invite a group of people, isolated, wondering if they had made the right choices in doing this course, overwhelmed by the volume of "readings" they have just purchased to create a space which supports honesty, vulnerability, risk taking?
In all my classes I know that investment in developing community at the beginning enables deep and emergent learnings as we proceed. How do we develop community without doing the "Ho hum, not another get to know you game." How can the ways we come to know each other be purposeful, linking to the learning topic, and which might establish routines and orientations towards the space I want to create?
What happened?
It was very interesting. I went in very early and set up the class in a large circle with a board which had the "signposts" for the lesson and left. When I came in before the lesson many students were already there sitting around the circle. I started with a Bell Routine. This is an activity that students expect to do when they come in without teacher guidance which orients them to the lesson. It enables them to get settled, allows for late people, without on-time students having to wait around for the teacher to start. This particular activity was a questionnaire which asked what inspired them to teach, what gifts they had to offer, and what their fears were. Also they had to put on a name label. I went around the room with my attendence sheet and was able to greet each student by name and check them off.
I wonder what difference just that beginning had made to these students?
After doing a little inspirational speech (as one does) I suggested that to get know each other we could do in two ways. One is to get a sense of the whole, and another to get to know individuals. So we all stood in a perfect circle where we could see each other, no hiding, and I asked everyone to say their name one after the other around the circle. It was like a soundscape of the names of the whole class. I then asked for favorite colour and then an emotion that we were feeling. The "check-in" was very interesting as some people were feeling "tense", "jittery", but most were positive, open.
Did the circle activity itself create fear and uncomfortability? How would I know?
Then I said "who are we?". I did an exercise I had experienced from John Gruber who asks those in the group, who have this one thing in common (e.g. who got a parking easily), to step forward into the circle and to look around. My other questions included who has had a previous career, had some teaching experience, has a science or arts background, is a parent, likes essays, plays a musical instrument, is aiming for primary or secondary teaching. People seemed to take time and really look. I felt as though we were all getting a sense of those in the same boat as us.
So now, rather than only the teacher owning the overall perspective of the class. We all shared it.
I wonder if people felt that who they were, what experiences they had, and their outside lives were being acknowledged, and welcomed. Did they feel less like an student-object and more seen as a whole-person?
Then I asked the students to move around to find a new partner to discuss briefly a relevent question to the topic which I posed. I also aked them to try on a role - "What does it mean to greet someone with your personal persona, versus your public one? Actually try it out with a new person you meet. "
Everyone seemed confused about what I meant but I encouraged them to have a go and see what happened. What emerged was one of those wonderful insights that enabled us later on to get inside the words of what we mean by respecting diverse learners in the classroom. Perhaps we can't actually move into a personal self with someone until you get to know them. It is something that comes from relationship. So if we are committed to respecting diversity we need to be committed to getting to know the other.
I think Parker Palmer, who believes in the heart of education would have been very proud! It was our first experiment with identity and what a profound insight we were left with.
Did everyone get it though? And is it a universal insight? Was it just my "teaching moment" rather than everyone's "learning moment"?
After the pair sharing we got back in the circle and did an 'emotion' check-in which was much more positive, yet two people stood out - one was still "tense" and another "hungry". Immediately someone passed him a packet of food. Later he came and saw me and told me how much this spontaneaous act made him feel very much "at home". The lady who was tense explained to us all that she normally was, and it would take a while, and not to worry. Again, it seemed that rather than me owning the responsibility to ensure and fix my students wellbeing it had become a responsibility that we all shared.
Later, I put students into groups to discuss what sort of classroom community they wanted using the headings of operation issues, learning issues, classroom culture issues, conflict resolution. Each group selected something from their discussion to propose to the whole class. Some suggestions included, time to digest and talk with each other about the previous lecture and readings, a mixture of whole group, small group, a mixture of styles of learning. One girl was very keen that we ensure we have some movement every lesson, like this one and I told them about my journalism class on 8:30 am Monday mornings where students volunteered to do a "wake-up" activity. The day we had red cordial we were all hyped up! She immediately volunteered to run one for the class the follwing session.
Another key proposal was having a classroom culture where they could take risks and be vulnerable - they felt they were among friends who could support their journey. I guess if I was coming from a metaphor of curriculum as learning objectives culture I would be pretty pleased. A key aim of mine was actually embraced by the students.
I wonder if some of the suggestions wouldn't have been made without me creating a vision and an experience of the possibilities. Classroom agreements can very much be words and not "live" in the minds and hearts of the participants.
The critical reflection (see link)
As I bring a more critical reflective lens on this I wonder about the disempowerment we create in traditional classroom structures - not just in terms of giving people a voice, or some control, but in everyone being able to fully express their humanity.
I wonder about whether it is enough to want to be a caring, patient, friendly, understanding teacher - as many of the students said they did. Perhaps we have to ensure that in doing so we are not taking away opportunities for others to do so as well.
It is interesting that when one of the students handed the "hungry" student the food, I thought to myself (how thoughtless am I not to bring in my usual start-up minties) and said to the class that this is what I normally do. Do I need to be seen as the all-seeing, all-solving, all-caring human being?
Brookfield suggests that teachers who make mistakes often don't mind because by revealing their vulnerability they give permission for their students to show their vulnerability. Yet students can just see such mistake-ridden teachers as incompetent and they can lose their authority (a word which would take another post to unpack). I wonder if there is another dimension of this - providing openness for others to step in. So perhaps the "perfect lesson" is not about what we cover and do with efficient ease, but provides spaces for surprises, and those spaces invite others to enter in some way.
So we are back to the perennial dilemmas of teaching -
- content versus space,
- structure versus freedom,
- currciulum as learning objectives versus curriculum as experience
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