When the student is ready, the teacher will appear — Buddhist proverb
Here are my core beliefs about being a teacher, being a student, education and the classroom, to help you know what you’re getting into if you take one of my classes (updated 9/20/08). I believe:
- Good teachers are always students.
- Good teachers recognize the different stages of learning of students and try to bring students to the next stages, culminating in synthesis, creativity, integration and changes in perception and belief.
- Good teachers build classrooms that are learning communities.
- Good teachers encourage independent learning.
- Good students take the initiative for their own learning, making the classroom a marvelous and exciting place.
- Good teachers point the way but let the students finish the job.
- Knowledge is meant to live inside you, not outside you, and only students can put it there.
- Good students are independent learners ready to do whatever it takes to pull together knowledge.
- Good teachers need good students as much as good students need good teachers.
- Teaching is more than presenting knowledge, it’s encouraging curiosity, maturity, mastery, cultural awareness, social change, perceptual change, tolerance and respect.
- Learning has at least four components. In increasing order of importance, they are: putting information into long term memory in a way it can be recalled correctly, understanding that information, being able to use that information, and finally, having that information modify your assumptions about the subject, and ideally, about the world. In other words, education begins with memorization and ends with revelation.
- Technology assists education; it doesn’t replace education.
- The old-fashioned lecture, known as “chalk and talk,” done well, is a wonderful teaching tool. I try to do it well.
- Good students take copious notes and review them each day before class.
- Good teachers respect students by maintaining high expectations and standards. College is meant to be hard and time consuming, a challenge to the student’s intellect and assumptions about the world.
- Good teachers learn from students as much as students learn from teachers.
- A little formality is good in the student/teacher relationship. So is a little humor and patience.
- Good teachers don’t rely on grades as motivation. Over-emphasis on grades undermines students’ intrinsic motivation for deep, satisfying, lifelong learning. The work is its own reward. Grades discourage risk-taking.
- Good students don’t play it safe. This strategy avoids failure but limits learning. Taking chances risks failure but increases learning.
- The learning during the semester continues to work its magic long after the semester is over.
- Good teachers don’t pigeonhole students, knowing that all students have the potential to rise to new levels; no one is stuck in the same place. College is a world apart from family, parents, and work, and is a chance to reinvent yourself.
- Personal integrity is necessary for education to occur.
- Gossip is contrary to goals of empathy, patience, respect and tolerance, which are keys to education.
- College is a gift, not an entitlement; students are expected to make this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity their top priority.
- Good teachers are willing to compliment, correct and critique in detail. It’s tough to administer corrections, but good teachers want to teach students not to experience corrections as put downs. Validation is important, yet in order to learn one must first know one’s mistakes. Being corrected can be frustrating, but it’s also possible to be excited by having one’s mistakes pointed out.
- Students and professors do not need to “earn” respect; respect begins the first day of class.
If you have any questions about how these beliefs might affect a classroom, please e-mail me through the Contact page.
Some people who have strongly influenced my life and my teaching:
- Professor Virginia Cleary, my freshman composition English professor in 1975 at Queensboro Community College, who first pointed out my writing gifts in a (very rough) composition on “The Joys of Backpacking” (I got an A-), and demonstrated tolerance, respect and understanding toward a diverse group of students during a turbulent time (I also remember that class had one Michael Jackman and two Michael Jacksons in it).
- Dean K.C. Potter, probably the best disciplinary dean ever. I worked as his executive secretary from 1984-1992 at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Residential and Judicial Affairs. He taught me most of what I know about applied justice, tolerance and compassion, and as the best employer ever, supported my efforts to complete my undergraduate education.
- Professor Ellen Caldwell, who allowed me to audit her freshman composition class at Vanderbilt University in 1987 so I could see if I had what it took to return to college after dropping out (at that time Vanderbilt employees couldn’t enroll in degree programs). She taught me what it means to teach your heart out, gave me the vocabulary of grammar, and told me I was a wonderful writer.
- Professor Jan Wilson (may she rest in peace), in 1988, in British Literature at Belmont University, taught me about love of learning, literature, teaching, and respect, and taught me to understand poetry. She once had a car accident that erased part of her memory; she spent two years relearning literature. Her grace in confronting a terminal brain tumor taught me truly what it was to live and die with passion and compassion.
- Professor Sena Naslund, my writing mentor during my MA in Creative Writing at the University of Louisville, taught me the best way to workshop writing and supported my creative efforts.
- Hazzan David Lipp, cantor of congregation Adath Jeshurun, a spiritual guide and mentor, taught me a great deal about empathizing with others, acting ethically, and being able to admit when you’re wrong. He also demonstrated how to make things happen through action.
A book that I have found influential in my teaching is:
Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004.
A concept I have been influenced by is Coach John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success.” A student in W-290 class made me aware of it. The Web site is coachwooden.com.
