Palmer’s third chapter speaks about paradox in teaching and learning. He describes paradox, overall, as the inner tension experienced in the heart of every teacher, competing and pulling between laughter and pain, joy and sadness, engagement and apathy. He embraces the soul of the teacher pungently: “teaching...can only be expressed as paradoxes”. Push them yet coddle them, inspire them yet give them thinking time, challenge them yet celebrate their established riches. Parker’s description brings into light the true tension in the hearts of teachers, balancing forces of emotion, identity, intellect, and truth.
Palmer discusses six major ideas of paradox in teaching. Palmer’s first is space being bound and open. In the classroom, students need to have the freedom to encounter knowledge without restraint. However, if rules and structures are not established, things can become chaotic. For example, rules for sports such as soccer and hockey allow for structure in the game which enables an engaging game (bound). On the field itself, players are open to be creative, in their dribbling, passing, and shooting without restriction (open). The space between the two is where soccer excellence happens.
Palmer’s second example of paradox is hospitality opposing a “charged”. Students need to feel safe in a class for learning to occur. Students, however, should not feel safe enough to put their feet up and nap. Our learning environments need to be electric. As I teach students in my class room if they lay their head down I say: “You can sleep at home!” Creating an engaging, safe environment requires an acute sense of the nature of the students and the ability to know when a stretch break is not needed but required....
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...iving money is not smart or safe but buying someone a coffee or sandwich or helping at a soup kitchen is a healthy form of social justice. Add a parable about Lazarus and the students have a healthy balance between the binding word of God and the openness of how we can serve Jesus in our lives.
Overall, Palmer’s description blends nicely to the vocation of teaching through another lens in teaching and learning and that is virtue. Virtue is not a balance with another vice but a middle ground between two extremes. For example, fortitude is not counter balanced with gluttony, but rather fortitude is a middle between laziness and recklessness. The inner landscape of a teacher is filled with many similar paradoxes, that challenge teachers to walk the middle road, to engage students to encounter their material, ask questions, and pursue life-long learning.
In the first chapter of the book “on being a teacher” titled “why are we here? What is the job that we are being asked to do, by Jonathan Kozol? He expatiated that painstaking teachers who have researched the foundation of open education are confronted with a choice making (Kozol, 3).
The book Lives on the Boundary, written by Mike Rose, provides great insight to what the new teaching professional may anticipate in the classroom. This book may be used to inform a teacher’s philosophy and may render the teacher more effective. Lives on the Boundary is a first person account composed of eight chapters each of which treat a different obstacle faced by Mike Rose in his years as a student and as an educator. More specifically in chapters one through five Mike Rose focuses on his own personal struggles and achievements as a student. Ultimately the aim is to highlight the underpreparedness of some of today’s learners.
Wallis, Claudia. “How to Make Great Teachers.” Time Online. 13 Feb. 2008. Web. 16 March 2011.
The combination of class and service learning provided a solid foundation on which to be a morally responsible leader. During class, all sorts of ideas are brought up and discussed as a group and critically analyzing from different perspectives and relating it to other ideas. This enables the students rectify their own beliefs and morals in constructive ways. From these developments, we begin to see how it fits in the world and try to apply ourselves and gain wisdom. Gaining knowledge, experience and wisdom, it becomes our understanding to find good in any aspect of our lives and work towards advancing that good in a way that benefits all.
To be a great teacher, you must first be a great learner. When you learn something, most of the time your first instinct is to go out and share it with the world, because it’s an interesting experience to see people's faces light up as they learn something new. The Allegory of the cave by Plato, Thinking as a hobby by William Goldman, The Chosen by Chaim Potok, and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, explore a little about being a learner and a teacher, and the way to become the best of each of them. The Cave is Plato’s thoughts on how the world thinks, as well as Goldman’s Thinking as a Hobby. The Chosen teaches a lot about learning and teaching by exploring the thoughts and ideals of Reuven and Danny, who both focus on learning by
This novel positively portrays social justice and motivates students to become
Greene, Maxine. "Teaching as Possibility: A Light in Dark Times." (n.d.): n. pag. Web. .
The social justice program especially is a unique opportunity for students at St Mary's College to use their positions of privilege to make a meaningful difference to the global community. Initiatives such as project compassion, Vinnies on Parade, Live Below the Line and Vinnies winter appeal are all opportunities for St Mary’s students to put into practice the ethos of justice and use their privilege to raise funds and awareness for those who are disadvantaged. This program is something that is very much at the heart of the culture of St Mary’s, and something that has moulded my own journey here. Every year from Year 8 to Year 11, I have been awarded the privilege to represent my class in a group of like-minded people- all working towards a common goal- to educate our peers on social justice issues, and raise funds for organisations that assist people facing them.
Great teaching requires sacrifice and consistently puts the development of the child first Esquith, after teaching for over 30 years and writing several award winning books, exemplifies this child centered philosophy of teaching. His purpose is to share his dedicated and selfless approach to teaching with teachers, in the hope that they too, will be inspired ‘to teach like their hair is on fire.’ He believes that commitment to each individual student is essential. As a role model, he stresses the importance of being dependable and providing an atmosphere that is safe and that promotes the love of learning. He focusses on values and teaching his students to respect themselves and others, to be kind and to always work hard (Esquith, 2007). With Esquith’s simple motto of, “be nice, work hard and there are no shortcuts, in the classroom” (Esquith,2007), it is easy to see why his students are so happy and successful.
In today’s classroom, the teacher is no longer viewed as the sole custodian of knowledge. The role of a teacher has evolved into being amongst one of the sources of information allowing students to become active learners, whilst developing and widening their skills. Needless to say, learning has no borders – even for the teacher. One of the strongest beliefs which I cling to with regards to teaching is that, teaching never stops and a teacher must always possess the same eagerness as a student. Through several interactions with other teachers, I always strive for new ideas, techniques, teaching styles and strategies that I might add to my pedagogical knowledge. Furthermore, through personal reflection, feedback and evaluation...
My teaching career has been spent learning how to provide appropriate support, guidance, patience, & understanding, as well as to enhance academic growth & success, for all students. My purpose as a teacher is to enrich and inspire the lives of young students with moderate/intensive needs by providing access to information instead of functioning as the primary source of information for students to flourish. My teaching methods will be to create an environment ripe with opportunities for discovery and exploration which will allow all students to learn at their own pace, generate questions and construct knowledge, while providing hands-on practice of skills in authentic situations as well as to make learning intriguing and meaningful to all students. Carefully planned and constructed learning environment will also allow the teacher more time to meet the individual needs of each student. Another important factor to a well-prepared learning environment is to facilitate learning, and providing students with balance and consistency (2004). Young students require a balance between various classroom dimensions, including activities guided by the teacher and independent work, quiet work and active work, gross motor and fine motor activities, and open and closed aspects to the curriculum and classroom materials (2004). Consistency is also a required condition for learner success. Schedules (daily and weekly), the enforcement of classroom rules, and student expectations should not be in flux but remain consistent. Without a sense of consistency in the classroom, school life would lack the necessary feeling of safety and reliability young children need to focus, to take risks, and to t...
In Releasing the Imagination, she writes, “In my view, the classroom situation most provocative of thoughtfulness and critical consciousness is the one in which teachers and learners find themselves conducting a kind of collaborative search, each from her or his lived situation.” (Greene, p. 23). To Greene, cooperation between teachers and students is essential because, as human beings, both are in the “process of creating a self, an identity” (Greene, p. 20). As a result, teachers must be acutely aware that they too are lacking and have something valuable to gain from the experience of teaching. Greene suggested, “If teaching can be thought of as an address to others’ consciousness, it may be a summons on the part of one incomplete person to other incomplete persons to reach for wholeness” (Greene, p. 26).
Along these two weeks we have been prompt to make a recall to our own way of learning and why we became a teacher: Was it because coincidence, due to life circumstances, maybe because family tradition, was it a conscious decision or because someone influenced us? Whatever the answer is, we have to face reality and be conscious that being a teacher does not only means to teach a lesson and asses students learning. It requires playing the different roles a teacher must perform whenever is needed and required by our learners, identify our pupils needs and preferences, respecting their integrity and individuality but influencing and motivating them to improve themselves and become independent.
Pike, B., & Bradley, F. (1997). The philosophy of teaching: Developing a statement that thrives in the classroom. Clearing House, 70(3), 125. Retrieved October 6, 2011 from http://library.gcu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9703092460&site=ehost-live&scope=site
When thinking of a philosophy of teaching, four major issues need to be considered. Those issues are one’s views on education, the role of the teacher, teaching and learning, and on the children. This is something that someone entering the teaching profession needs to give serious thought to and realize the importance that this will hold in the future. The following essay will express my philosophy of teaching.