A Superteacher’s Views on the Learning Divide

This 11th year of teaching has been one of contemplation and reflection on the craft of teaching. Today, I thought a bit about the apparent divide between a teacher’s perspective on learning and a student’s perspective on learning. I believe a starting point to correcting this situation is teachers and students communicating. Here is how I managed to reconcile the two over the course of my educational journey as student and teacher:

A real teacher’s only job is to serve and help her students. At our core, we want all of you to succeed, to reach beyond the miasma of the average, the just good enough, to true mastery. Mastery to me means more than just scoring well on tests (tests suck. Seriously); mastery is reaching a level of immersion and understanding that leads to true passion, perhaps even the ecstatic bliss of knowing one’s purpose in life. I know this because I’ve experienced it myself with teaching. I resisted for a bit, always remembering my humanities and AP language teacher Dr. Earls, who taught me that learning is the thin veil between human and troglodyte. But yes, teaching is what fuels me, what keeps me motivated to be more. It’s this drive that should fuel your love of learning, but for so long learning has been a chore on a checklist, whose mark is the letter grade, a number on a sterile scale.

So, we come to an impasse. You believe learning is about getting a grade. I believe learning is about earning a grade. You believe your fate is in my hands. I believe only you can determine the course of your own education–you are entirely responsible for the choices you make.

I learned this as an undergraduate at the University of Florida. My first semester, a complete failure, is the one I’ll remember most because it forced me to live with the consequences of the choices I’d made. I reveled in my newfound freedom. I was away from home, living the awkward teenager’s dream of dorm rooms, dining hall food, and 6-dollar football games. I wasted my time sleeping, watching TV, going to the movies, and generally not going to class. I also wasn’t smart enough to save my money to purchase the class notes that semester. I’d chosen to take a particularly challenging course, AST 2037: Search for Life in the Universe because I loved science fiction (naturally), and assumed it would be an easy pass. I was wrong. The class threw so much math and physics at me that I was instantly lost, but instead of helping myself to learn, I gave up. So, after weeks of not attending my classes I earned the lowest grades of my life–a D+ in astronomy, two C+ in biology and to my utter shame, theater appreciation, and a B in art history. I knew instantly my scholarship was gone. I was downgraded from a Florida Academic Scholar to a Merit Scholar, putting more of the financial burden of school on me.

I worked for the next four years with single-minded purpose, never taking a summer off, taking on several concentrations to finally graduate with honors. I never blamed my teachers for my failures, nor did I hold them responsible for what grade I earned–if I earned a C on a paper, it was because of me. If I’d not taken advantage of the time given to me to work on an assignment and turned in what I knew was sub par work, I took the ding to the grade and added it to my list of “do not ever do this agains.”

So, it’s difficult for me to see it any other way, to feel that I should apply rules only in certain instances or occasions, to subjugate the worth of someone’s education by not holding them accountable to the standards everyone is expected to meet and exceed. To me, doing so would cheapen your education, making it worth less, making it less impacting on your immediate community and the larger human community. Yes, I want you to succeed, and I will do anything within my power to help you–within the scope of my responsibilities.  I am a guide, facilitator, evaluator, and cheerleader; I am not the learner, the one who must embark on a journey with a new set of tools, face a series of challenges, and return to the world with a new boon–mastery. You are the learner, the hero on your own journey.  I commit myself to ensuring you learn, to clarifying ideas, providing you with guidance and constructive critique, to constantly updating and polishing my craft to better serve your learning needs. I only ask that you embrace the call to adventure and make your world better through learning.

A blessed break from an epic tweak

I am taking a two month break from the classroom courtesy of an individual I have since realized is some kind of super robot, Alex Rister. She is teaching two months worth of very lucky folks. I know because I love being Alex’s student every other month! I love learning, enough to know I want to be a part of the proceses that lead to learning for the rest of my working life. This month, Alex taught a group of go-getting superstudents who outshine their contemporaries in diligence, commitment to excellence, and a positive spirit.

I took a break from working on my behemoth latest deck to review their final self-reflections for the month. Needless to say, they moved me–from admissions of this being a refuge from a tumultuous life to this being a hellishly difficult yet unforgettable month, the students gained so much from their experience this month. It echoes the concept of “naches” which I am reading about in Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken. Naches is the feeling of pride in someone else’s accomplishment; it is often felt by parents and teachers. I love a good naches. It happened this month and in many months prior. Every month, I feel naches, a sort of teacher win when a student labors towards awesomeness.

August’s class not only chose these as the qualities they most admired in other speakers; they also embodied them.

 

This post is written for superteacher, Alex Rister, who inspires her students to warm my cold, cold teacher heart each and every month.

Limitless by David Crandall

Today, my students presented their persuasive PechaKucha presentations. This assignment is a true challenge for students who spend 32 hours of their week in a classroom and still have another 15-20 hours of work to complete weekly. The prospect of putting together a pre-timed, fast-paced presentation is daunting, and often leaves students feeling completely frightened. However, super students past and present have risen to the challenge to create amazing presentations. Today was no exception. In honor of my amazing June class, who has restored my faith in teaching and learning, I share David Crandall’s Limitless.