Post 482: The Courage To Teach Chapter 3

 

 Post 482: The Courage To Teach Chapter 3

We are currently in the third week of my Professional Development online class, and we are discussing the paradoxes of teaching in Parker J. Palmer's book, The Courage To Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life.

Palmer wants us to connect our head and our heart together rather than think of our head and heart as two separate entities. We need to learn to love our students whether they fail or succeed. I believe when Palmer focuses on the heart and head connection, he wants us to think about caring for our students no matter if the students cooperate and learn well (dance well) or if students are stubborn, refuse to learn, do very little work, show little effort (refuse to dance well). He wants us not to feel angry when our students do not dance well with us. I like when he says that our students are not there to fulfill our ego 'our desire to have every student follow in our footsteps and learn what we teach them'.  I took from this chapter overall that you love your students whether they fail or succeed. Palmer also mentions that when we get angry, we don't let it show.  Trust me, even if you hide your anger, students know. Being angry creates a divide between you and your students--and students become afraid to ask you questions which goes back to the previous chapter of creating ways to reduce student fear by being welcoming and approachable--no matter what. You have to have enough of your own self identity and the Courage To Teach no matter how much the student learns, or not learns.

There are a lot of paradoxes in teaching. One day, you can feel like you are a great teacher when your students understand your lesson, and get good grades. Then, on the next day, when you either teach a new lesson or another class, and your class fails to understand the lesson or fails the assignment, you can feel like a lousy teacher, and you begin to question why you got into teaching. Palmer describes the highs and lows of teaching along with how that impacts our inner life. We are joyful when all goes well in the classroom, then angry when students refuse to learn, or do not put in the effort to learn. 

Palmer explores the ying and yang of teaching. The six paradoxes Palmer introduces in his book that contribute to pedagogical design (Palmer, 1997, 76) are the following : "1. The space should be bounded and open. 2. The space should be hospitable and charged.  3. The space should invite the voice of the individual and the voice of the group. 4. The space should honor the little stories of the student, and the big stories of the discipline and tradition. 5. The space should support the solitude and surround it with the resources of the community. 6. The space should welcome both silence and speech.

In #1, The space should be bounded and open.  Students should be free to say what they want about the topic (open) but bound by the topic at hand.

In #2, The space should be hospitable and charged. Students should be made to feel welcome, yet the teaching question at hand should challenge the student intellect.

In #3, The space should invite the voice of the individual, and the voice of the group. In other words, student voice should be preserved as much as possible while still being able to amplify the voice of the group. When we do peer review, we give students suggestions to improve papers, but we do it politely.

In #4, The space should honor the 'little' stories of the students, and the big stories of the discipline. When I grade student papers, I should not cross out their stories and have them rewrite it, instead, I give them gentle suggestions on essay structure first, to preserve their story, then grade for grammar later so as not to overwhelm the little stories of the student with the big stories of the discipline.

In #5, The space should support the solitude and surround it with resources of community. Students should be free to reflect on the topic and get help by going to writing center and tutoring center to get help for their work.

In #6, The space should welcome both silence and speech--This is the one the boss wants us to work on--In other words, when we give students questions to answer, we should give students sufficient time to answer the question, and not just jump the gun when we get uncomfortable with the silence by answering the question ourselves, thus killing the teaching moment and stifling student development and confidence. 

For me, the last paradox #6 talks about respecting the student silence, that the student could still be thinking about the answer to your teacher question, and not jump into the fray and answer your own question because you feel uncomfortable with the student's silence.  I admit I do this sometimes during my lectures. When I lecture, I make an effort to include the student by asking from time to time comprehension check questions, or a 'What is wrong with this sentence?' question. Then, just as I figure they don't know the answer as I grow uncomfortable with the silence, then both students would jump in, answer the question at the same time. Therefore, I understand what Palmer is getting at in respecting that silence and giving students time to answer the question.

Post 481: The Courage To Teach Chapter 2 Week 2

 

 

Post 481: The Courage To Teach by Parker J. Palmer--Chapter 2

In Chapter 2, Palmer talks about how Western culture has a lot of fear built into it. In education, the students fear the authority of the teacher.  The teacher fears being laughed at by the students. The teacher fear colleagues because the teacher competes with colleagues for promotions and raises. The student fears losing the teacher's respect by asking too many questions and looking stupid. The teacher fears losing student approval at the end of class rating. So, when you combine the fears of the teacher, and the fears of the student together, Palmer says, then, "These fears paralyze education" and no learning takes place.

Palmer advises teachers to form a community with students, get students to trust the teacher, get students to feel comfortable asking teachers questions, create a welcoming approachable atmosphere in which students lose their fear of looking stupid in front of the teacher, and the teacher shows the students they are human, makes mistakes, has a welcoming caring nurturing teaching persona which cause students to trust and bond with the teacher. Once the students bond and trust the teacher, the two form a community of learning where students depend on each other for learning, and the teacher asks as a guide to keep the students on guide.

Once the fear is dissipated can real learning take place. The top down traditional learning structure of a teacher centered classroom where the teacher dominates the classroom and views the students as empty vessels to be filled with information only perpetuates student fears of the teacher and students continue to see the teacher as an authority figure who gives them good or bad grades depending on how much students can memorize material for the test.

The teacher learns to trust the students, and the students learn to trust the teacher, and both create their own culture, their own community of learning. I help my students overcome their fear of me by answering every student in the welcome forum, giving students a 'How are you doing email?', giving students a live Welcome to the class Zoom Session where I make it apparent that I am easy to approach for any questions or concerns students may have. It is essential to create this welcoming environment in the first two weeks of class to get students situated in your class, and to motivate students to learn and succeed in class. The focus of Chapter 2 is reducing fear for education/learning to happen.

Post 480: The Courage To Teach by Parker J. Palmer: Chapter 1: The Heart of a Teacher: Integrity in Teaching

 Post 480: The Courage To Teach by Parker J. Palmer: Chapter 1

At Fortis College where I work, my boss is hosting a book club where we are reading, The Courage To Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life by Parker J. Palmer. We will be reading all 7 chapters in 7 weeks for Professional Development credit. Each week, we will read one chapter. 

During Week 1, Palmer discusses that to be a good teacher, you have to learn to explore your inner self. You have to know who you are to teach a good class. Palmer says good teaching is not about technique, but knowing yourself, having the courage to be vulnerable with your students, so your students can see you as a human being and be able to connect and relate to you.

The boss summarized Chapter 1 this way and took out this quote for us to comment on " Strong teaching cannot be reduced to technique. It comes from the identity, authenticity, and integrity of the teacher. All good teachers have one common trait;  a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work." How do you let your identity infuse your teaching?

Many students in my Professional Development class wrote about their teaching experiences. They said that the most important component to teaching is caring, authenticity, honesty, and vulnerability. You have to have the courage to expose yourself to your students as being honest, vulnerable and authentic rather than hide behind the Sage on the Stage facade.

One teacher wrote about how her father worked as a coach for 40 years and acted as a role model for her to become a caring teacher, and how she wants to live up to her father's career where students loved him and showed up for his funeral.

For me, the most important aspect of teaching is to care about your students. I know that my identity is tied with my teaching which is what Palmer says that to know yourself, to know your inner life, is to know yourself as a teacher.

I used an example from when I worked at Koreatown. At Korea town, I had to teach the Sage on the Stage method because that was the method used in Korean schools. I taught at a Korean after school where Korean students go to regular public American school during the day, then from 3PM to 9PM, they take extra school to get ahead. The immigrant Korean parents are very strict and want their children to have the same top down 9AM to 9PM education where the teacher is the only speaker and the students are the passive listeners as they did when they were young. I was required to teach in the Sage on the Stage manner, and I found out quickly that I disliked being the only one talking for hours at a time. I realized that I am a student centered project oriented teacher Guide by the Side more than I am a Sage on the Stage.

As I was reading the end of Chapter 1, the concepts of internal motivation and external motivation came to mind.  Palmer says that when we teach, it comes from an inner place, an internal motivation to want your students to succeed, and to want all your students to succeed, and that teaching is not about external motivation like grades, or rote memory, but not understand the teacher's inner self and to be able to animate this internal motivation of loving writing or whatever you teach to students. I feel every time a student fails, I fail as a teacher.

 Every time I see a low grade from a student, I feel internally I failed as a teacher.  For me, my internal motivation and what makes me happy is to see all students succeed, be happy, and develop a lifelong love for writing.  When I see all my students with A's, I don't see this as grade inflation, I see this as my success as a teacher to teach students to love writing and be a life long learner and for my students to become confident in their ability to communicate. My internal happiness is tied with the happiness and success of my students in the class. 

For me, caring about my students is the most important aspect of teaching. I believe it when Palmer says that teaching is not about technique, but about the heart and about getting to know your inner life. I just know I am not a pure Sage on the Stage teacher because it would be boring if I did all the talking all of the time. The joy of teaching personally is for me to interact with students and engage students into the teaching experience and have students be able to apply what they learn in the classroom to their daily work life or home life.

Teaching is not about external motivation like grades, rote memory, or technique, but from what comes from the heart.  I believe the best teachers teach from the heart and truly cares for their students.  When students see that you teach from an inner place, they then know you care about them, and believe in their ability to shoot for the moon. To give my students this confidence to shoot for the moon in writing I hope will become my biggest legacy for my students. 

It is all about connecting with your inner self, so you can connect with your students and teach your students from the heart, that to me is the main theme of the first chapter of this book. 

What do you think kind reader is the theme of the first chapter of this book?

The next chapter for next week deals with fear. Chapter 2: A Culture of Fear: The Disconnect and Education. Stay tuned for next week's topic!

Post 479: Use of Bitmoji for Student Motivation In the Forums

 Using Bitmoji In order to Congratulate Students for Good Responses In the Forum

When I engage students in the forum, I like to ask them challenging questions from the reading. Many students ignore the harder questions, and only answer the easier teacher questions. When I give questions in the forums, I use questions from the low end of Bloom's Taxonomy to the high end of Bloom's that is concrete to abstract questions. Most students answer the low end definition questions and skip the high end abstract ones. However, one student actually answered one of my high end questions, so I congratulated her with a Bitmoji!