Challenging moments

I had my second tutorial for my first group of pre-service teachers (Tute 3) in Professional Studies today which I think was quite challenging for all of us. I layered it - entwining affective and effective agendas into maybe a far too rich torte - with perhaps too much bitterness and not enough cream.

The key focus was exploring (through discussing it and living it) "Why is reflection important in developing teacher identity?" Critical reflection is about challenging our assumptions. For the first part of our discussion we challenged what we thought we knew learning was - what it looked, like, sounded like, felt like, and what learning moments could be. It seemed to generate rich insights. But really, I would have to say, while some of us might have had some of our ideas shook up, we all felt pretty safe in doing so (though there were some heated moments of debate).

Then we had a wake-up activity provided by one student. Following this I asked everyone to form small groups and just to say:

"What I noticed about how I felt, what I was thinking as I did this activity..."

This seemed very hard for my group - everyone wanted to move out of the phenomena of the experience into judging or analysing it. It seemed other groups did too.

Then we formed discussion groups to explore the readings. The extra dimension was that each person took on a role outside their comfort zone - each reflecting aspects of the roles teachers take in the classroom:

• facilitator - to give a clear vision and purpose, guide the discussion, and weave in the different threads
• time-keeper/task-orientation - to make judgments on when to rein in discussion or let it continue - based on value of emergence versus need to meet a set agenda
• recorder/historian of learning moments - to capture the groups key learning moments as signposts of their journey and to reflect back at appropriate times to help them clarify or tease out meaning
• socialiser/group needs - concerned with ensuring everyone's needs are met, no-one dominates, all given a turn, and to manage any inappropriate behaviours
• witness of self - to notice what is happening - how they are reacting, and to be the person that reminds them to breathe when situations get sticky
• researcher - this is the person who doesn't make assumptions from body language or responses of how people are learning - they really try to find out.
  

By being able to put on one role at a time the aim was to build classroom confidence. After 20 minutes I asked the groups to debrief by a TRIBES community circle - one person has the pen and only they can talk while holding it before passing it around the group. They had to say "what I noticed from my role was..." and not to analyse or be judgmental. It helped that we had tried this in relation to the wake-up activity.

Only now do I realise how challenging this debriefing process was, and how different it was to challenging an idea that we might hold (though some people's self-identity can be deeply intertwined with the ideas they have).

Each group was confronted with having to listen to someone else's perspective about themselves and how the group operated (some seemingly good and some not so good), with some people picking up on really interesting aspects that no-one had considered. In terms of group dynamics some people found out that they dominated, that discussion was often between several people, and that some, while interesting, were leading the group off track too often.

So what is it like to hear something (that usually no-one ever tells you) which actually might challenge how you think about yourself? Is this a challenge to our own identity? How easy is it to slip into defensive mode? What does it mean for us in developing a professional capacity to be open to feedback?

I felt that the insights the groups made about the content learning as well as their learning about the debriefing was so deep and valuable. (But now I wonder if I acknowledged this enough. I certainly didn't acknowledge the fact that students were really putting themselves on the line... because it just didn't occur to me until I had a chance to reflect about it.)

To finish the session I invited comment back on my own lesson structure, some of which seemed a little negative. After talking this over with a teacher colleague I now realise the importance of asking for feedback which might be positive, negative, or interesting. When we get into a critical voice we tend to focus on what is problematic rather than all those things that should be celebrated!

I left the class feeling a bit all over the place, unsettled, energy spiky and not quite there. I was certainly not in a state of resolution. I came away wondering if I should have closed it better, helped create a sense of buoyancy like last time, or whether it was OK to leave things hanging. Especially since one of our insights about learning was about creating conditions for students to move acrosss Vygotsky's proximity gap - from curiosity, to uncomfortablity to insight.... and giving time for people to make the connections for themselves, rather than the teacher trying to tie everything up. But not making the gap too big!

Was the learning gap too big? How did everyone else feel?

Critical Reflection

On one hand I am valuing stimulating classroom experiences to promote the challenge of assumptions, yet on the other hand, at the heart of me, I am a caring teacher. I hadn't thought through the consequences of my experiments on my students - that my methods might move from challenging ideas to challenging self. I hadn't wondered if this was in the students' best interests. Is that lack of foresight or am I ethically irresponsible?

In my original planning of the lesson I had a strong intuitive need to follow the discussion with a creative activity. I didn't have time for this and I wonder whether this in fact was really important and I should have gone with my gut. Coincidentally I just received an email from an international colleague which looks at the relationship between locked-into assumptions, vulnerability and creativity. Is giving people a creative outlet extremely important after such sessions - another way of knowing and being, a form of expressing something that is yet to be seen or understood, and only in the expressing is it formed? Does it provide a celebration of the midwifery process which perhaps comes before the actual rite of passage into enlightenment?

One of my students questioned why teachers need to critically reflect - surely it becomes very tiresome after awhile. The critical practice we were engaged with in this session was very tiring. It definitely needs balance. Brookfield suggests we use the lenses of colleague teachers, autobiography, student feedback and literature sources in a process of critical reflectivity. Yes, but I would like to add more - creativity, contemplation, and asking what is whole, true, good and beautiful in what we do.

One student said she felt she got to know me this lesson. We had a moment where she was lampooning the "witness" idea: "I am breathing, Sue, I am breathing." And I was quite playful back. When I am so in my head about the agendas of the class I forget to laugh... so one of the roles we need is the laughing teacher!

I wonder what learnings everyone in the class has gained from this, and whether they will apply critical reflection or other forms of gaining insight? Perhaps they are laughing about it, in which case they have achieved teacher-mastery level 4.2.

Picture CC: Daquella manera

Developing a community of practice - part 2

In this post I describe my tute for my second group of pre-service teachers in the Professional Studies unit. It follows on from the last post where I reflected on my tuturial for my first group.

Last post I said the first tute seemed to confirm my sense of vocation for teaching teachers; the second made me seriously doubt it. I left feeling I had a lot of cheek standing up in front of prospective teachers and believing that who I was and what I knew was in anyway aligned to what they wanted and needed - which was to get out into prac with real students and real schools. I felt humbled.

Okay, so that was my typical angsty emotional response that Brookfield says we teachers can get into. Can critical reflection really stop the cycle of self-blame and help us into a a more useful perspective?

Some critical reflection

The whole experience brought back memories of my "difficult" maths students who had been so disempowered all through their schooling that they took on behaviours that continued to sabotage their learning. When I invited them to have a voice, debrief about past injustices and be part of negotiating the processes and content for their own learning I opened a floodgate. Suddenly I was the recipient of pent up anger and resentment. And once that was out of the way, we could move on and develop real relationships and learn how to help each other tune onto learning.

So when I gave my second group of pre-service teachers an opportunity to "really" explore what sort of community practice they wanted a whole lot of stuff came out about their whole course:

• a sense of disempowerment,
• a concern that the census date (which locks you into paying fees for the course) was before the pracs - so students could not test whether teaching was for them,
• concern that they were just overwhlemed by content after content with no space to digest,
  
• concern that simple basic needs such as sufficient break to eat lunch, walk around etc was not factored into their timetables.

My topic is based on the notion "we teach who we are." When I stand up within a classroom in a building I am more than this me, who is teaching. I am part of the systemic whole; the policies, the buildings, the timetable, the lack of access to water. I am complicit in it all. And while I might stand up and try to model a critical constructivist teaching philosophy, the environment that I am in teaches something different. It stands for something different - it teaches who it is - which is perhaps not the modelling we want our pre-service teachers to take with them into schools.

When I asked the course co-ordinator whether the students could have access to filtered water (the water in the building is problematic) she said that they had asked the university previously and were refused, because the uni management wanted students to go down to the ref in the union buildings to get access to food and water - so encouraging centrality of student mixing. Hello? Isn't access to water a basic human right?

So really what we are talking here about is making visible the set of values that are guiding educational decisions. Brookfield suggestes we need to challenge the assumptions of such values. The value of student mixing might be a good one, but we need to also ask, "what might be diminished if we whole heartedly privilege this view?" Perhaps each value comes with an opposite. Our role as teachers is to see the dilemmas, and then see the greater landscape. so rather just staying in complicit holding patterns we can begin to challenge those greater factors which conspire to detract from learning.

Reflection on critical reflection

Moving into a critical reflection stance has left me militant, and full of flem. I want to rebel, make waves, stand up for the rights of others, treat issues at their source.

Calm down, calm down. Is there another way? What is whole, good and beautiful in what we do and how can we build on this?

Parker Parmer says we need to take responsibility in owning all of ourselves - the shadow as well as the light, the fears as well as our gifts. How does a whole organization do this?

I am left with a feeling of asking, what is me, what isn't me? What can I change, what do we need to change? I am into teaching primarily because I want to transform the world, evolve consciousness, help heal society. I know that means a commitment to my own transformative journey and a commitment to engaging with many reflective lenses that can help challenge me and move me into new perspectives and insights. How do I invite others to join me, because I need partners in helping to create social transformation.

First step, a water cooler in the the education building.

Image Creative Commons: Robillard

Developing a community of practice

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

And in all of this what about the students in the class that I didn't get to hear? Am I just basing my feelings for what happened on the vocal view of the few. I guess I better get to know all my students and find out!