Some of the reading I have done for my dissertation has focused on the idea that teaching is an invitation into learning. I recall cold Alberta days when I would take out books and read. I never left the warm confines of the house, yet I traveled the world.
Teaching and learning are invitational. The John Muir quote in Ese’s post is easily reworded. It is not just the mountains calling. It is the world and the universe. Subjects come alive and speak to us when they hold meaning.
Teaching cannot guarantee learning. What it can do is provide spaces where learning happens as students find the subjects speaking to them. We, in turn, respond and a life-long conversations are struck up. Living and learning entangle and are inseparable.
ivonprefontaine
How Does the teaching dynamic you speak of change from a classroom setting to this blog platform?
Who is student and teacher in cyberspace?
Seems we may shift back and forth at times.
Students come with advanced ages on the platform.
Your questions are interesting. I morphed as a teacher seeing my students as teaching and me learning. That even predates the increase in social media usage. Each person has a story to tell about who they are and their journey.
I always told my students that books could take them anywhere in the world. Before winter break I once invited them to travel via books over break. In January a student came up and told me he’d gone to Alaska in a book and loved the journey.
We can envision in our mind and it becomes real in a sense.
Truly, this is what teaching should be all about…..finding what speaks to us. I’ve been in education 25 years, and it can be so disappointing to see the factory model applied to classrooms and school systems, but with 1,000 K-5 students crammed onto one campus, logistics end up driving the day. Our new Common Core standards have given us one encouraging turn, however. They have placed a bit more emphasis on thinking and reasoning in the classroom rather than regurgitating information. Now…..if we could just train the teachers to think! Many of our 30-40 year old crowd came into the classroom with uber-structured pacing calendars and haven’t a clue how to design effective lessons.
The profession has changed immensely and yet has not changed at all. The one thing that has changed is the young teachers and School managers believe they have something new which changes the world and School.
… provide spaces where learning happens, I agree. Teachers also open the gate for learning.
We do. It is an invitational space.
‘I never left the warm confines of the house, yet I traveled the world.’ I really like that!! It’s wonderful that learning can be done in that way. I find the internet definitely does that for me, I see so much that I could never see in real life, I just couldn’t afford all that travel, never mind the time it would take! You Tube can also be very educational. Learning can be done in so many ways! 🙂
The way we can access the world has changed and broadening the voyages and adventures.
Good thoughts to consider. What little teaching I have done has taught me. First, I have to prepare and the questions in class are an opportunity, too.
I used to find the questions I had not thought of were often the best. They grew out of the planning.