I think that Mina
Shaughnessy’s ideas about the four stages of the teacher’s emotional
development were one aspect of our class that I really noticed in relation to
the teaching philosophy that I invented, as well as the andragogy and pedagogy
lectures I learned for this course. My interest in teaching has gotten in this
class to the point where I’ve been completely interested in any other
interpretation of the way that a teacher emotionally engages his or her
students. I never really knew a professor who just viewed a student the way that
a doctor views a patient, as Shaughnessy mentioned in her opening paragraph,
but I can probably infer that there have been professors who thought that way,
there are professors who think that way, and there always will be professors
who will think that way. Therefore, the four stages on guarding the tower,
converting the natives, sounding the depths, and diving in strike some interest
in how a teacher sees his or her students. The idea of a teacher diving into
being a student of these students after a long period of time really seems off,
but after our discussions of using pedagogy to reach students at a personal
level, I feel like students do end up teaching their own teacher about how to
discipline, how to teach, and so on and so forth. First, we guard them from
outside resources, then we convert them to our rhetoric, then we dive in to
know them on a personal level, and we finally learn new disciplines based
around those new students who end up teaching us how to be better teachers.
I
think that teaching a class and pedagogy in general is a symbiotic relationship
at its best and a learning experience for the teacher at its worst. At its
best, a teacher teaches to a level that appeals to and engages students, which
teaches you what you want to know about them and about how to teach a class.
Student responses can be constructive criticism, yet they shouldn’t make you
bow down to their needs in any sense of the word. You still have to be
disciplinary as a teacher, and that means guarding students from distractions
and other perceptions. Thus, filling their heads with new information and
outlooks on learning material, be it compositions or creative writing or even
mycology, becomes easier now that there aren’t any outside distractions like
Facebook to interfere. I use Facebook as an example in an iffy sense, since we
have mentioned that most classrooms don’t allow electronics. All the same, a
symbiotic relationship between teacher and student can come from even flunking
a student, instead of flunking an entire class, on one assignment early on. By
flunking that student in a required ENGL 1300 course, you can rope him or her
into at least taking the subject seriously and learning from his or her
mistakes. So if done right, we could have a scenario where everybody wins. If
pedagogy or andragogy is done wrong, on the other hand, someone still wins by
learning: the teacher. Adjusting to screwing up with pedagogy is not an easy
pill to swallow in any of its myriad forms, but it should teach the teacher how
not to handle or reach a class in a very firsthand experience. As long as one
or two factors gains knowledge from the process in any way, the practitioner of
pedagogy still stays on the right track regarding becoming a better teacher of
students.
I remember being taught and teaching tutors at the Sam Houston Writing Center that we were not the Paper Doctors as students often referred to us as and that we did not want the atmosphere of the center to feel like a Doctor's office or the waiting area of a mechanic shop. I like your conversation on last week's reading. I personally like the idea of Diving in from the text.
ReplyDeleteDo you think the flunking example could backfire? I would worry about further turning that student away from the subject material. What are some other ways we could help the student to interact with materials beyond this? How can our commentary, using what we learned in class, better help students to create an "everyone wins" classroom?
Good point on the flunking example, Clint. With teaching principles, it's really important to balance optimism with cynicism when it comes to helping students out. For instance, you could help the student interact with the subject material more by giving them Cs or Ds instead of just an F. An F, under closer inspection, is way too extreme a motivator. Yet to me, a C or a D is almost the same as flunking, so I probably had my own warped vision of how school works in the way of my teaching advice. Great counterpoints here, Clint. You really gave me some stuff to think about.
DeleteNice to hear. Yes, her four stages are very telling, and once one knows them, it's easier to see where students are in their understanding and how we can best help them. Can Facebook be used in teaching? Can't we bring in some of the discussion that students are engaged in outside of the class?
ReplyDeleteFacebook is like a giant jungle to me. Students might get easily distracted by other non-educational stuff on that giant social media. I fear they might justify pictures of them at the beach as a photoessay or FarmVille as research for their argument. But on the more optimistic side, teachers could come up with a Facebook group for their class like the groups we have for DownTime or the Graduate English Society. You might be onto something there, Rich.
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