Purpose Statement
Reduce reticence,
enhance trust
Description of Activity
Like shoveling the
tide back with a spoon, where do you begin?
Like the corporate world, education says one thing but usually does another.
It encourages reticence and discourages trust: the circle completes itself,
round and round from student to teacher and returning. When a student reaches
community college this process has developed and solidified for thirteen years,
more if strangers have been responsible for pre-school education.
When trust does not exist, reticence will dominate the stage and
learning-education becomes the victim. Teachers may not, at this moment, be
able to change admin-education but they can be aware of how to keep it out of
the classroom and nurture learning-education. Here are some awarenesses I
value:
1. From the first day there must be an embrace in trust: few may return it but
it will unfold. How? Do I expalin to my students what I believe the student-teacher
relationship should be and ask them to share their ideas? What do I think that
is? How does my own psycho-industrial social conditioning, my ego and all of
its fears, cloud and control that understanding? Am I working, class by class,
to build that trust, to prove I am trustworthy?
2. How can I, class by class, minimize the negative effects of admin-education,
and all the values based on "making" instead of "being,"
and participate in learning-teaching? How can I maximize quality, thought and
reflection, not rote-quantity? How can I give my students more time for
reflection, even if some won't use it? How can I encourage them to use such
time, to slow down, to be?
If I cannot begin to gain the student's trust, they will never raise their hand.
I can admin-teach them into raising their hand but they will never participate;
it will be the previous thirteen years all over again.
This is barely the outline
The point is, do I dare to embrace them unconditionally, creating a new world
of teaching and learning? Is love possible?.
Materials Needed
Students and Teachers
Application
See "Description of
Activity"
Related Student Services
None
this web page was created
on 11/2/99 at 3:56:21 PM
and modified on 11/2/99 at 3:56:21 PM