Purpose Statement
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.
Description of Activity
Here are some awareness
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 explain 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 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?
Materials Needed
1 student
1 teacher
The courage to Trust, unconditionally
Application
If I cannot begin to
gain the students' trust, they will never raise their hand, never speak. 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?
this web page was created
on 11/6/99 at 8:33:01 AM
and modified on 11/6/99 at 8:33:01 AM