Sunday, January 25, 2004
The heart and soul of teaching
From Karen:
Was thinking about how teaching is kind of like being an alchemist. We take a bunch of ingredients...a variety of students and all the variables they bring with them, a teacher and all the variables s/he brings, and a particular content...and attempt to transform the learning experience from something common into something special. If the analogy of teaching and alchemy holds true, then less experienced teachers would produce one result with a particular set of ingredients and more experienced teachers would produce a superior result with the same set of ingredients. But that isn't always the case. The Soul Food Cafe prompt also says:
Like the alchemist, it takes trial and error to achieve transformation and find gold.
Each class, each semester, provides a different set of ingredients and the interaction of those ingredients, even for experienced teachers, is never the same. The advantage of being an experienced teacher then is not that one will produce a superior result because of their experience. It is that one is more experienced at trial and error and has more experiences upon which to base their decisions, thus making trial and error less random than it might appear. It is only through trial and error that transformation, the changing the common into something special, can actually occur. Without it, the classroom experience for both the teacher and the students is simply something common.
Was thinking about how teaching is kind of like being an alchemist. We take a bunch of ingredients...a variety of students and all the variables they bring with them, a teacher and all the variables s/he brings, and a particular content...and attempt to transform the learning experience from something common into something special. If the analogy of teaching and alchemy holds true, then less experienced teachers would produce one result with a particular set of ingredients and more experienced teachers would produce a superior result with the same set of ingredients. But that isn't always the case. The Soul Food Cafe prompt also says:
Like the alchemist, it takes trial and error to achieve transformation and find gold.
Each class, each semester, provides a different set of ingredients and the interaction of those ingredients, even for experienced teachers, is never the same. The advantage of being an experienced teacher then is not that one will produce a superior result because of their experience. It is that one is more experienced at trial and error and has more experiences upon which to base their decisions, thus making trial and error less random than it might appear. It is only through trial and error that transformation, the changing the common into something special, can actually occur. Without it, the classroom experience for both the teacher and the students is simply something common.
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