A Little Academic Rant

In which I talk about Teaching with Curiosity and Vulnerability

Last year when I was doing my PGCE , one of my assignments was to write an essay based on a quote by Joseph Mc Donald who contemplates the questions we often ask ourselves, our subject matter, and about our students:  What shall I teach amid all that I might teach? How can I grasp it myself so that my grasping may enable theirs? What are they thinking and feeling – toward me, toward each other, toward the thinking I am trying to teach? How near should I come, how far off should I stay?

This links up nicely to what I was writing about in Chips, Rice or Baked Potatoe where I speak about how I see the learners as individuals and take the relationship I have with them past the boundaries of the subject I teach and even out of school entirely. 

The premise of my essay was basically about how it is so important to maintain ones own curiosity about a subject; it is this curiosity that will bring about the imaginative ideas and it is this curiosity that will bring about the most passion for the subject, the most satisfaction and the most attentiveness from your students. For them to be aware that you are a fallible human being and not as a know-it-all ATM of knowledge. That you too are seeking to know more about the world and the subjects you teach. And the more passion and genuine curiosity you show and feel the more it will interest them into the subject too. Ideally anyway!

For a student to see this fallible side of you, for he or she to think you are “just like me” one needs to display some vulnerability in the classroom, provided of course, it is appropriate for you to do so. This vulnerability is by no means a lack of control (over students or subject matter), or a state of woundedness, for me it is rather the lack of arrogance, a humility which to my mind, if coupled with passion and curiosity, will be the optimum stance for a teacher to take with a class in order to facilitate learning and personal growth.

It’s easy to forget that teaching is a relationship. Vulnerability is an essential part of building trust and authenticity in the teaching relationship (and of any relationship Id say). It is after all not a class one is teaching but a group of individuals, of souls and hearts, and those are what need to be reached. Our students need to know that we, as teachers, continue to be students, and that learning is a lifelong pursuit.

It must be noted at this point that this most assuredly does not mean you lose your authority in the classroom. As McDonald pointed out in an email to me: “The chemistry of the triangle creates incessant uncertainty, though of course, teachers have to act with authority despite the uncertainty.” (2011) 

What I think he is saying is that, as a teacher one is still the ever-present director, or aid, but not necessarily the sage. I like to think of a teacher as an orchestral conductor, ever summoning, enhancing or lulling the tempo of the music of a class, designing the program or show rather than being it. It’s a symbiosis of sorts where neither (nor the learning) could exist without the other.

To extend this metaphor, it may be useful to picture a conductor / teacher, standing in front of his orchestra / class channeling all these emotions, sometimes through his face, sometimes through his whole body. Praising, admonishing, encouraging collaboration and harmony till noise becomes music. Chaos becomes order. Knowledge is instilled.

Sometimes the directing gestures are grandiose and expansive, other times it could be the very slightest expression change or nod of the head. It is this type of intuition that is needed between a teacher and a class, and this has to be initiated by you (me) as a teacher.Sometimes it is listening, sometimes reacting, sometimes acting or a combination of all of these, which will bring the harmony. It is the questions that we ask ourselves, as seen in McDonald’s quote, that give us the time signature, the key, the clef and tempo in a piece of music.

What do you think?