Planning Planning Planning
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: What it is to teach! ...
I am sitting here on Sunday evening after spending a large chunk of my weekend in front of the computer planning activities for the next week. So I must conclude, after doing this every time I am out on rounds teaching, that this part of what it is to teach.

Planning must be a paramount part of teaching: it is not good enough to walk in and fly by the seat of our pants. There will be times when we have to wing it for some reason; but it is in the light of planned learning activities which for some reason or another that a professional choice is made to deter from them.

Overplanning seems to be the key really. If we have too much planned then we know that if the kids race through the activities quicker than expected then we have something for them to go onto.

We can always roll a lesson on to the next day or the next week or whatever. Surely overplanning is a strength of teaching not a problem.

Plan plan plan; this is the watchword to keep in mind. If I fail to plan adequately then I believe my teaching will falter.

This is all very well except when you have forgotten to take the term planner home for the weekend. I have mucked it up here! I have a weeks worth of writing activities to plan but cannot remember what the writing focus is for the week. I am hoping that I am able to somehow pull it all together before the end of recess tomorrow. Otherwise I may just have to fly by the seat of my pants; something I just do not want to do at all.

Well here's hoping something works out for tomorrow!
Richard

It's all part of the drama
Mood:  chatty
Topic: What it is to teach! ...
Sitting here on a friday morning preparing myself to teach for the day. I have been thinking over the past few days just how much of what I do as a teacher is acting; or at least a form of drama.

I stand in front of a group of children and present instructions and activities, facilitate discussions and the like. I present a facade of confidence and professionalism: I do not always feel that way. I engage in drama to do this.

I present to children an attitude that is caring and considerate and (hopefully) fair: I do not always feel this way.

Oh in so many ways I am called on to present myself in particular ways; perhaps that philosophical tendancy to refer to us as actors is much closer to the truth than I have considered in the past!

To teach is to engage in drama: to walk into the classroom and choose to perform, to act out the role of teacher. Yes I am sure at times the role and who we are as people are very close indeed! At other times are the feelings of tiredness and exhaustion and frustration and other feelings too which say to us oh I could not be bothered being that person today. Yet we choose to act it out!

I was told recently that I had an obvious patience with the children in the classroom. To this my internal response was "YEAH SURE!" my external response was to reply that I did not feel like I was a patient person most of the time.

All this acting, some would be thinking is this hypocritical or fake: by no means. It is, for me at least, a choice to be as much me as I can be. Even when I just do not feel like it!

That "real me" that we act out is, I think, an ideal me; not necessarily the me I think or feel that I am but the me that I idealy am. As we act out on the stage of the teacher I believe our subconcious plays an active role; those often hidden but never dormant processes seem to have more influence in directing how we go about things.

So I am left feeling that Yes it is acting and drama. Is it fake? I respond with a resounding no! Yes it is acting and drama yet I believe it is the most authentic acting and drama that we can ever be called upon to enact.

Hmmm can I really say?
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: The times they are a changin
Topic: What it is to teach! ...
Come gather round people lets all be aware the times they are a changin. A little lyrical I guess but what better way to begin a blog, especially one asking what it is to teach. I feel it is really appropriate to be asking those very questions as I sit on the cusp of striking out into the ether of a career in education.

So what then is it to teach? I do not think I can really say, or really even guess. I guess I can say what I think it is not. It is not some empirical activity where I impart my apparent superior knowledge to the supposedly grateful recipients. That whole image just does not work for me. It is so far from reality that it makes me cringe inwardly.

What then is to teach? A thought or a concept is birthing within my soul even as I sit and manipulate these little electrons into black marks upon the screen. This thought is not a new one, (so it is not really birthed) it is the idea that the very concept to teach is infact flawed; antithetical to how I think we learn.

So this idea; new or renewed: I canot truly say, tempts the jargon to come falling from my lips. That jargon that can so easilly spurt sickeningly into the public domain of dialogue and discussion: Life-long learning, collaboritive tasks, community of enquiry, shared learning journey! Oh it is so putrid, so poluted; yet touches a truth that tauntingly spurs me to talk and think and, dare I say it to teach!

Oh what high order thinking I must be doing, but surely I jest. So what then is my concept of teaching? I find it impossible to actually define, to commit myself to a concept! Yet I must say something here. All I can bring myself to trust is a ephemeral concept of teaching as the facilitation (I hate the word it is so business) of a journey of learning, helping my students and myself to uncover what it is together we know.

Aha by George, or is that Georgia ... I've got it: Teaching has nothing to do with knowledge! What! Well knowledge does have a secondary role: it occurs as a result of learning but not an objective. Learning is not about knowledge but about the pursuit, the journey, the quest for truth, social truth, academic truth, scientific truth, mathematical trith; whichever it does not matter!

To Teach then is to thrust yourself and your students towards a discovery of truth!

I hear you whisper with the ancient pontificus Pontias Pilate What is truth? ...