Category: Week 6 – Your Authentic Teaching Voice

I must be a “schooler” because the parable at the beginning of Papert’s chapter is ridiculous.

I think even worse how pretentiously he presents that there’s pushback against the idea that teachers shouldn’t be able to recognize the future classroom. Of course there is. Talking about the surgical theater brings up visions of a plethora of electronics all used to monitor different vital signs. We don’t need a pulse oximeter in the classroom to ensure that we are safe. Most people don’t need an oxygen mask. No one needs to be under constant supervision because they have been sedated with a drug the potentially could stop their heart. The comparison intentionally leads people in the wrong direction and then tries to use their obvious confusion at why the classroom would ever need to look like a surgical theater to make a clarion call for megachange.

This chapter was written in 1992, why would the classroom need to change so radically that teachers from 100 years before wouldn’t understand what was going on? Video games can be a great teaching tool, but are they necessary to create most of the change he was talking about? We talked in class two weeks ago, about a group of students that were taken outside and asked to walk around barefoot in order to facilitate a more student directed learning while emphasizing critical thinking skills. Is he expecting the classroom to look more like the matrix where we can plug in and experience new things we otherwise never could?  How much of a role does technology need to play in changing the philosophy of the education system?

Again, maybe my schooler mentality is obstructing my ability to see the future of the machine.

More to the point, however, why is making bad comparison something we should avoid? Example: me. I’m writing this blog post. We had two really good readings about finding your teaching self, and I’m stuck on this terrible parable. I’m not even talking about the rest of the chapter the bad parable came from.

Maybe it’s a flaw of mine, I should be able to look past the parable to see the bigger picture, right? Perhaps, but story telling is a powerful teaching tool. If you haven’t read some of the research on how well humans learn through story telling it’s pretty interesting. The basic gist of it is that stories help us experience things, not just hear and process. Stories stick with us longer. They incorporate more parts of our brain than when receiving facts. They have been a part of human existence probably from its beginning. Keep in mind the earliest cave paintings are more than 40,000 years old. We are hardwired to listen and relate to stories. I’m sure this is why storytelling was listed as something lectures are good for a few weeks back.

Back to Papert though. If the megachange needs to occur in the mindset of educators and the basic philosophies of the education system. The focus of the parable shouldn’t be on technological tools. Because that’s all they are… tools. And tools are only as proficient and creative as the craftsman that holds them. If the craftsman has new tools, but their mindset, philosophy, and creativity hasn’t evolved with the tool then the tool won’t be used to its full potential anyway.

Let’s end with a story about a man provided with the technology that could change they way he does his job. It’s called. Idiot with the Drill.

 

I have not taught a class and I have not been taught how to teach. I am fortunate enough that as a graduate student, I have been funded through GRA positions through several different programs. However, I do want to go into academia and the longer I put off teaching, the more daunting it feels. I’m afraid of being out of touch and not remembering what it is like as a student leanring a subject. I’m afraid of teaching just to pay the bills and not out of passion, as I was taught. As a graduate student, I’m told that teaching is secondary to research and should not be the main focus of my efforts. But if I do not put in the time and effort to become a good teacher, how do I improve? Do I have to wait until I become a professor to have the time to become a better teacher? But even then, if I want to continue doing research, how I will get tenure is through my research, not my teaching. Unlike the small, liberal arts, teaching-focused university I attended as an undergraduate, research universities put their focus on the products of research, again leaving no time to better my teaching skills. Will I then have to wait until I get tenure? Or will I have to put research aside to focus on the teaching? Can I find this balance?

How do I develop a teaching voice? I can’t develop one through trial and error, there are students’ education on the line. When I tell people I study mathematics, they almost always tell me they dislike it and can trace it back to a teacher they had in middle school or a professor in college. I don’t want to leave such a neative impact on students. I can’t learn through theory. Students are individuals and will not fit into a theoretical mold. How do I have a teaching voice without having experience teaching and how do I take the time to appreciate teaching when time is stretched so thin?

I can recall my dad exclaiming many times growing up “I’m here to be your dad, not your best friend.”  This of course was after I’d done something stupid, as teenagers tend to do, and was being reprimanded for it.  Of course in the moment, I always thought “why not both?”  But that was part of learning while growing up.  I already had friends that were my peers.  Looking back now, I realized what I really needed was to be held accountable.  That was what my dad was teaching me.  He was tough on me, but not unfair, and I feel like this helped to mold me into a reasonably responsible adult.  Reading Sarah Deel’s journey in her development as a teacher really resonated with me in many of the same ways that my relationship with my dad did.  She described this delicate balance between being a teacher and being a friend.  While I still think “why not both,” I can appreciate that certainly one is more important than the other.  Much like Sarah described, I’ve tried to mimic some of my more memorable professors while I was an undergrad, and even a grad student.  While this has provided some guidance, I think I found myself trying to be more likable than someone who was truly teaching.  Once I came to this realization, I reminded myself why I came back to school, and why I wanted to teach.

Much like the rest of the class, my journey to get here has been unique.  Watching the set of College Gameday on tv this morning echoed my time here as a freshman in that glorious national championship run in 1999.  Yes, I’m a little older than the traditional grad student but I hide it well.  In the fall of ’04, I finished grad school down the street at Radford, got married and at a youthful 20 something, I was hired as a police officer in the town I grew up in.

While I was always fond of academia, I didn’t think I’d ever return.  I told myself that I’d love to go back to school, get my Ph.D. and teach as a “retirement” job once my law enforcement career ran its course but doubted the possibility as something I’d really follow through with.  I dove into the job head first, and loved it.  Growing up, it was all I ever wanted to do.  Of course, my dad being my dad, he always asked “what’s next?”  While he respected my career decision, he was always nudging me to strive for more.  I think he just didn’t want me to settle for what I already had.

I learned very early on, that while I learned an enormous amount from my time in college, the thing it did not prepare me for was this job.  I was a first generation police officer so I just learned as I went.  In college, I had only one instructor who ever had any personal experience in law enforcement.  She was a medically retired officer from one of the Carolinas that taught my “Intro to Criminology” course while she was working on her Ph.D.  The irony of the situation is now clear, but I digress.  The lack of personal connection between instructors and the actual job became something I really focused on as I began to close in on ten years of working.  I began to see fresh recruits from the academy who were entering a world that academia had not prepared them for, much like myself a decade before.  That voice in the back of my head reminded me of that “retirement” job that I entertained when I had graduated, but I only let it linger for a few moments.  By this time, I had made detective and several specialty teams, and promotion was on the horizon.  Why give this up to go back to school?

I recall the events unfolding very vividly from here.  Around 2pm on a Friday, I recieved a call from my mom.  College football kickoff weekend was only a day away, and I had made plans to have my family come enjoy a BBQ at my house and watch the Hokies.  I expected this was a call about the ensuing details.  “Dad’s been in an accident, you need to come to Hylton” was all mom said.  Lights an siren, I raced to the main entrance of my old high school to discover dad was gone.  He was fatally struck by a car of a student at the school while he was waiting at a crosswalk.  I didn’t know it then, but this moment was the reason my dad wanted me to always strive for my best, and not settle.  Because life can change at the drop of a hat, and regret is far more powerful than you’d ever expect.

To make an already long story a little shorter, I made the decision, with the support of my family, to reinvest in that pipe dream of a “retirement” job.  I moved back to the New River valley and was admitted into school as a part time Ph.D. student while I worked 12 hour night shifts for Blacksburg’s finest.  My passion for academia was reinvigorated, motivated by the thought of influencing students who had the same passion for law enforcement as I once had.  This began the molding of my teaching voice.  While I may not take the same line in the sand approach of “I’m here to be your friend, I’m here to be your teacher” stance like a father-son relationship, I can certainly appreciate the perspective.  Much like Sarah Deel, approachability is huge, but so is accountability.