Reflection on
Students, Teaching and Learning
Frances Vitali (Jan. 21,
2008)
What is important for
you to know about me:
Teaching
to me is fun, spontaneous, interesting, relevant, energetic, experiential.
I teach by example and am unorthodox and playful. Call it the guerrilla school of learning. Learning
to me is fun and the best learning happens in conversational, informal and
relaxed settings. I provide learning opportunities through experiential and
engaging activities for you to explore our course content. I facilitate,
coordinate, stimulate, instigate. Above all, my goal in every course is to make
the learning environment interesting, energizing and inspiring to entice you to
follow your own interests, curiosity and questions. You bring prior experiences
with you and you will add to that. What you need to know, you will learn from
your students and peers, if you are receptive. Students and teacher have
opportunities to learn beside each other, as Seymour Papert
reminds us. Constructivists learn from stories, so stories are important to all
learning and teaching. We will create stories together that will become our own
learning and teaching stories-teach with stories and learn from stories.
What is important for
you to know about this course:
The
syllabus is our framework. I have taken time to provide timelines and due dates
in an organized way for you to follow. There is much learning in our class that
we will go with the flow and we will process from week to week which gives the
feel of randomness and ambiguity. In the digital age, one of the skills we need
to learn is how to navigate around ambiguity and problem-solve independently
and cooperatively.
“Learners in the process of learning must
also learn to tolerate uncertainties and ambiguities. For example, learners may
be encouraged to read or talk by comprehending the overall gist of the message
as opposed to concentrating on every single word in the message. And if they do
not understand, they should be willing to ask for help…Learners must also learn
to live with errors and not let errors become an impediment to their learning.
In general, learners in a communicative paradigm must eventually learn how to
take charge of their learning, with guided support”
Zainuddin, et. al. (2007). Fundamentals
of teaching English to speakers of other languages in k-12 mainstream
classrooms.
This
is an experiential course where you are as much part of the learning process as
I. I will be learning along side you and see myself more as a facilitator and
director in your learning adventure. I also expect you to be curious and
question what you do not understand or need more clarification on. We are
creating a learning community where we are experiencing together how the course
will play out. That cannot be determined in advance since we will be engaging
together in a processual, experiential learning
adventure together. Learning should be fun, informal, relaxed, whimsical and
self-motivated and intrinsic. I have set the framework and the way it plays out
is up to you. I will try to take my leads from you and our Apache students in
our practicum experience. Working with Apache students provides an authentic
context in which to learn and teach together. Therefore it represents an
important part of our class time and course evaluation.
In our
Chautauqua, we will use family characters as content and context for teaching
and learning. Technology is a tool for communication as well as a tool for
storing your intellectual property. Your webpages for
this class will be your evaluation of your learning as you document your
learning over time. Your pages are yours, your property and represent your
professional virtual selves. We will also learn about video editing as we
prepare for and document our final Chautauqua performances with fourth graders
at Apache school.
“As teachers, we have daily opportunities to
affirm that our students’ lives and language are unique and important. We do
that in the selections of literature we read, in the history we choose to
teach, and we do it by giving legitimacy to our student’s lives as a content
worthy of study.” May students continue to draw from their own stories in
making sense of and connecting to their own learning.
Christensen,
L. (2000). Reading, writing, and rising
up: Teaching about social justice and the power of the written word.
What you need to know
about my philosophy of education:
I
am a humanist and constructivist and not a Controller or Behaviorist. Our
learning is shared together and we honor individuality, our collective
diversity, different ways of learning, expressing and sharing in our learning
community as culturally responsive people and educators.
The
kind of student you are will determine the kind of educator you become. If you
are scared of learning, you will teach with fear. If you want to control what
students learn, you will try to control their learning. If you honor children
and their creativity and playfulness, you will celebrate the ways in which they
learn and give them ample room for discovery.
If
you learn because you have to or somebody is making you or because you are supposed to do it that way, or that’s what they want, then you will
place limitations on your learning experience and, in turn, those of your
students.
Learn
because YOU want to. As a professional, it is not about what is easiest or most
convenient for you in earning your education degree. What is most important is
trying to be the best, to challenge yourself; to
stretch yourself from the comfort zone and to be comfortable as a learner.
Teacher, learner and change are synonymous. Change means you have learned
something in the process. Learning means you have been changed in the process.
Change implies you have learned something new. I hold myself up to the same
standards I am requiring of you. I will never ask you to do anything I would
not do myself. My learning is intertwined with your learning.
“Imagination
is more important than knowledge,” as attributed to Einstein, is what I wrote
in my philosophy of teaching many years ago. And so, I believe it is even more
so applicable today. For what are we preparing students: a world of constant
change and dealing with problems that has never existed before? So what is
important in educating children is to nurture flexible, independent thinkers
who can problem-solve cooperatively, respecting and communicating with diverse
people within diverse settings, virtually or face-to-face.
Your learning
is for you, guided by your interests, motivation and curiosity. I expect that
you are confident learners who are nurtured in a stimulating environment of
inquiry where goals and objectives are set; yet the way to them
are as different and creative as the number of people in our class. If you do
not understand, you need to speak up and have the courage to ask questions
instead of relying on the outspoken person in the class who will speak for you
or wait and complain about not understanding outside of class. Communication
and trust are crucial to building our learning community. We cannot grow during
the semester without this honest level of trust and communication. Without it,
I will flounder in supporting your learning and our collective learning will be
out of balance.
Please
honor your uniqueness within the learning environment, respecting there are
numerous ways to understand anything and everything. I will respect your
individuality. Our view can only reveal partial understanding, since there are
so many storied individuals with such different perspectives and experiences.
Educating linguistically diverse students is not new. Children throughout the
history of education have always been linguistically diverse; since the 1990s
we are recognizing and validating that these differences do exist. What is
effective for English language learners (ELL) is effective for all students.
What we, as educators, can do to honor this reality, is to become aware of our
own biases and stereotypes, prejudices and recognize the inequalities that
exist and persist in the name of education.
As culturally
responsive educationalists, we honor the stories that children bring into their
learning environment and use those as the content and context for learning.
This is exemplified in the practicum collaboration at Apache. As reconceptualists, we do not take everything we teach for
granted but become discerning educators who recognize bias, censorship, racial
proclivities; inequalities in the curriculum we teach; disparity in the system
of education and the policy makers who establish the rules which govern our
profession.
Professional
integrity is also important to me, for as educators, our jobs are just as
important and life supporting as health professionals or company CEOs.
Therefore, it is imperative that we hold ourselves up to a high standard also. We
should have adroit writing, reading, spelling and communication skills. We
should think of ourselves as writers and readers who are constantly challenging
ourselves. We should never ask of our students to do anything we would not do
ourselves.
I am a
forward-thinking educator who does not settle on what is, but rather what can
be in the best interests of students
and their learning. We do not need to teach
our students but rather give them opportunities to learn about themselves in the process of learning. We have created a Frankenstein in our educational system,
and now we are dealing with the consequences. We cannot turn our backs on our
students or denounce them for what we have created them to become. A reform is
overdue to revision our educational system in a new way and to invite learning
that is relevant, stimulating, engaging and not demeaning to this generation of
children.
_________________________________
As Neil Postman said, “Our children are living messages we send to
a time we may never see.”
I am a critical theorist of critical pedagogy:
Peter Hall (1997): “Schools
represent a relatively stable system of inequality. They contribute to these
results by active acceptance and utilization of a dominant set of values,
norms, beliefs which, while appearing to offer opportunities to all, actually
support the success of a privileged minority and hinder the efforts and visions
of a majority” (Changing the Discourse in School in Race, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism: Policy and Practice, p. 151.)
Ivan Illich refered to compulsory
education as a compulsory lottery system with a few winning but more losing. Those who fail to have the winning lottery number (grades) are stigmatized.
This compulsory lottery system continues to higher education where it
intentionally reproduces privilege rather than inspiring scholarship “Killing
curiosity and killing students in the process” (Utne
Reader, 1995, Snell, p. 93).
Similar to Illich’s
concept was South American literacy activist Paolo Freire,
who compared education to a banking system with students as ‘depositories’ and teachers as ‘depositors’. The banking system
perpetuates domination and learners are passive consumers. Freire
advocated for the liberating of education where the learner becomes empowered
agents responsible for their own learning – not just what others want them to
learn. This is what he called conscientization. Freire’s ideas
about literacy empowerment were so controversial and in opposition to the
dominant way of thinking that he was exiled from his own country. As educators,
what kind of activists will we become as we teach in the name of educating
students?