"Come back when you have a focus for your paper." says the gatekeeping teacher.
Ahhhhhh! No!!!!!!!!!!
In mythology there are incredible examples of the gatekeeper. These take the form of guards to the gates of "hell" and "heaven." They also appear at bridges, ferries, labyrinths, and other assorted passage/transitional spaces. I'm not sure when our role as teachers morphed into this gatekeeping guardian. But I know I don't like it.
What are we guarding? What are we keeping? Both gerunds seem like the negative side of something good, something better. I don't want to guard, I want to give. I don't want to keep, I want to share.
Sharing is caring, keeping is crap.
If education needed guardians, then the only thing worth guarding would be the safe and free journey of the student. As a result, the teacher becomes guide on that journey.
I can see where teachers confuse their gatekeeping for coaching and guiding, but confusion is the important part of that sentence.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
new year rant
Our education thrives (and depends) on the production of knowledge, NOT the consumption of information.
The role of the teacher changes from dispensing information, to facilitating how students produce knowledge. Producing knowledge is not inventing something new. It is creating the conditions in which students can thrive. It is the connected Mind. It is the merging of the visceral and the virtual.
Teachers work in how, but start with why, always. This is the shift that Sinek articulates with the Golden Circle in Starting with Why. It is also, the "Belief to Action" process from Schlechty (via Hullfish and Smith). You act in accordance with your beliefs. Not outside of your beliefs, but as a condition of your beliefs. And this condition of belief and action is ... the air innovators breathe.
If you are a learner, then NOW is the greatest time to be alive. As a learner, as a curious human who is giddy to know more, the world comes in two flavors - 1st the visceral world, the world known by experience and interaction and engagement. Second to this is the virtual world, the world discovered vicariously through books and the internet. There are no subtle differences between the two. In other words, the differences are GRAND. And fundamentally, the 1st, the visceral, is knowledge and the 2nd, the virtual, is information. Together, combined in the correct ratio 3:1 (or was it 1:3 ?), will produce remarkable, maybe even astounding results. This is why Dale Dougherty is correct when he asserts that "a computer cannot be the UI (user interface) of a classroom." Because if a computer is the UI, then only information is achievable.
The role of the teacher changes from dispensing information, to facilitating how students produce knowledge. Producing knowledge is not inventing something new. It is creating the conditions in which students can thrive. It is the connected Mind. It is the merging of the visceral and the virtual.
Teachers work in how, but start with why, always. This is the shift that Sinek articulates with the Golden Circle in Starting with Why. It is also, the "Belief to Action" process from Schlechty (via Hullfish and Smith). You act in accordance with your beliefs. Not outside of your beliefs, but as a condition of your beliefs. And this condition of belief and action is ... the air innovators breathe.
If you are a learner, then NOW is the greatest time to be alive. As a learner, as a curious human who is giddy to know more, the world comes in two flavors - 1st the visceral world, the world known by experience and interaction and engagement. Second to this is the virtual world, the world discovered vicariously through books and the internet. There are no subtle differences between the two. In other words, the differences are GRAND. And fundamentally, the 1st, the visceral, is knowledge and the 2nd, the virtual, is information. Together, combined in the correct ratio 3:1 (or was it 1:3 ?), will produce remarkable, maybe even astounding results. This is why Dale Dougherty is correct when he asserts that "a computer cannot be the UI (user interface) of a classroom." Because if a computer is the UI, then only information is achievable.
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