I’m with you on TED talks and Seth Godin. I wish there was a way we could promote optimism and counter-current thinking that didn’t have to manifest in these glib performances. Even though I talked about his notion of bravery in my post, I think Seth Godin is mostly a puppet for a toxic culture of hype-productivity. His surface kinship with progressive thinkers doesn’t absolve him of the truth that his premises are the same of the systems he critiqued in that piece.

As future PhDs / current and future college instructors, the answer to “what is school for?” must be more nuanced than what was demonstrated by this week’s reading.

Great post! I really appreciated the example that you provided that showed growth and change over time and demonstrated how different people and places can influence a style. I agree with your post and Grace’s comment that exploring and seeing new perspectives is really important for learning. I hope that we all can find our own style and encourage our students to do the same.

Thank you for your post! I think you bring up so many great points. It can be very easy to forget that students often have a very full course load and have many things going on outside of class too. As educators, we do need to support our students and help them find resources and other support that may be beneficial as well. Great post!

Our readings for this week by Parker Palmer reminded me of another of his books I’ve read. One of the ideas that I took from his writing was that to be a teacher is to take the good with the bad, because for many of us this is our calling and vocation first and our career second. For me teaching well come just as much from my technical subject knowledge, professional presentation and class management skills as it does from my personal values, believes and motivations. I think that this personal conviction is what we need to demonstrate to our students and help them cultivate in their own lives. We need to teach them how to use their emotions in constructive ways through their education and work.

Caring for students really does set up apart. The teachers that I remember today were not always the best teachers because of their awesome pedagogy but because I knew that they cared about me. I still remember one of my college teachers coming into class after an exam and getting really upset about how poorly the class did. He was upset with us because he knew we could and had done better but he was also upset with himself for failing us as our teacher. I remember he said his worries had kept him up most of the night. I still remember the feeling of shame and disappointment I felt for letting him down and how I resolved to do better and be deserving of what we expected from us.

You’re spot on with a couple of things. First of all, broccoli is disgusting. Second, this class has taught us all that if nothing else, there isn’t one correct way to prepare the classroom. It seems to be more of a fluid dynamic that requires you to always adapt to see what works, and what doesn’t. This is reminiscent of learning and teaching: there is always more that can be done. Having an open mind of this fosters learning and teaching. I feel like you’ve summed up the entirety of the course with your last sentence: “Work on perfecting the craft of teaching, not perfecting the application of theory.”

I tried a role playing activity in my class two weeks ago. I was really nervous about doing it because of the unwritten rule that says science has no place for emotions. The students participated but I don’t know how much they really took it to heart and how much of a difference it made. I didn’t want to collect their worksheet for that day because I wanted them to have the freedom to write and think about whatever they wanted.

Maybe one of the problems is that our college education never leaves the building, literally. I had a class where I was learned about many new perspectives that were different from my own, but I learned about them by visiting people and talking, eating and living with them for several days. I could empathize with them because I had a personal connection with them. Not every class has the time and money to take a week long field trip around the world or across the state, but I know that with today’s technology there are ways for us to take ourselves and our students outside of the classroom and the world they know.

I was looking for a video to show in my class last Friday to introduce students to how important soil organic matter was. I was excited to find about 5 TEDx talk videos on youtube within a few minutes but it only took me about 15 minutes to realize that they all were basically useless. They were not any good, like both of you mentioned, because they didn’t have a good grasp on how their chosen topic really fits into the bigger scheme of things. Every single video I watched took only about 2-3 minutes to bring you climate change and never really got back to the REALLY cool science of organic matter. I think this and the post and comments illustrate that we as teachers and professionals will be around for a long time because even with all of this new technology, you still need someone to help you navigate and understand new ideas.

[Our education system still places obedience to authority above all else. As long as this remains the case, the man in charge will be able to get away with murder. Time and time again, institutionalized cruelty is given a pass. Although this was not news to me, it was comforting to know that someone else gets as mad about it as I do.]

Yeah. I’ve seen this occur in broad daylight time and time again when it comes to academia and education in general. Parker Palmer has always made me feel like okkkk maybe I’m not crazy after all. It is so easy to merely not want to be a part of academia anymore. I find myself becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of a job within industry where I’ll make more money and receive more accolades for caring about people and their wellbeing. Maybe that is just wishful thinking on my end, but when we continuously hear the woes of senior professors who genuinely care about teaching and receive nothing tangible for it, it’s disheartening. However, if our generation doesn’t begin to right the wrongs, then who will? Our education system has quickly gone from bad to worse when left in the hands of people who don’t care.

I definitely understand the concerns about the hierarchy within academia. I would like to think that our generation and future generations are more opened minded. I hate to say this but I’ve been in multiple situations where people have literally waited patiently for the “old boys’ club” to retire out.

Recently, I heard a really encouraging snippet of a speech from Meghan Markle. Although this speech has been circulating in lieu of the recent sexual harassment scandals emerging relating to various celebrities (and not to downplay the former cause, but this video is also popular as a result of her recent engagement to Prince Harry), I found it to be encouraging to both men and women in a sense that little actions can indeed promote change, sometimes even when we don’t expect them to.

I think you actually have some good insights here. You probably, like I tend to do, did not expect to get much benefit from something that did not show results and quantifiable data because that is how we have been trained to evaluate things in the sciences. But maybe this is a good exercise for us, to take a step back and recognize that there is more to life than the right answer.

You make an interesting point about how kids change as they get older, but I think there are actually three phases. I think that when kids are little, probably under age 5 or 6, they enjoy school and are motivated by learning new things just because they can. But as they spend more time in school they are trained to do what we tell them to and to follow directions (the external motivations you mentioned). Only later (if we’re lucky) will they begin to develop their own drive to learn again. To me, this seems to point to a problem with what we do in school. The TED talk video about what school is supposed to be about is really good (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXpbONjV1Jc).