Brison is a philosopher who teaches at Dartmouth. In 1990, she was taking a walk in southern France. She was attacked by a stranger, raped, beaten, and left for dead in a ditch. This book is both the personal story of her recovery and a philosophical exploration of the nature of trauma. In her journey, Brison opens up the nature of self. Using the perspective of feminist philosophy as a beginning point, she explores narrative, memory, autonomy and community. This book is for the Love and Evil class. I got about halfway through it today and will finish on Wednesday.
I also read the first few chapters of Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. We are using this as one of our texts in the Golden Apple Education Seminar. Palmer gives words to something that I have been feeling for a while. On page 10, "Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher." There are some things that I know go very well in my classroom. I know they succeed largely because my students tell me what they have learned from the experience. One of the best parts of my classroom is the nature of the discussions that we have. The students are candid, inquisitive, supportive of each other, open to new ideas, and careful about their listening. I have tried to think about the techniques that I use to create these discussions. I have also even taught several seminars about how to lead discussions. I have never been satisfied with my explanations. What's more I have observed other teachers trying to use my techniques with only limited success (at best.) I think I have technique (and some amount of theory) but I don't think that technique or theory are creating the conditions for learning in my discussions. The idea I got from Palmer is this: the success in my classroom comes from the identity and integrity that I attempt to bring and that my students are, in the main, willing to bring to the dialogue. I think my classroom is hard for another teacher to recreate because he / she should not be recreating it. He / she should be creating a classroom that flows directly from his / her own identity and integrity. Palmer explains (on page 24) that we need "to look for a way to teach that (is) more integral to (our) own nature(s)." When we know what our own natures are as teachers, we can find the techniques that will help them along.
I have been outspoken that teachers ought not lecture. I have cited the research that shows the low effectiveness of lecture as a method of learning and reminded listeners to how badly bored most of us are during endless lectures. Despite this, two or three of the most effective teachers I have ever experienced lectured constantly, and brilliantly. They were men of unrivaled scholarship and great intellectual ingenuity. Their lectures invited me into a world as imaginative and stimulating as a good book. They were, in fact, true to their natures and I found them to be hugely influential.
I find that, especially in the last few years, I am bored listening to myself in the classroom. I sound too pat, too rehearsed to myself. On the other hand, I am endlessly interesting in hearing the stories of my students and in reacting to those tales with my own experiences and reflections. I further find that, for me personally, I learn better when I carefully and closely read a text than when it is explained to me. As a result of these realizations, I have been condensing my lecture material to talks no longer than seven minutes (the students timed me this year and I never exceeded the seven minute limit.) It tires me to repeatedly deliver these talks and multiple sections is the nature of high school. So I recorded them with good visuals and post the lectures on the website--all seven minutes of them. I use study guides and other techniques to aid the students with reading the text. This is almost always done in class rather than as a homework assignment. In a better and more rigorous world, students in eleventh grade might all go home and read carefully about ethical theory but, in this world, they do best when guided and prodded. Then I work hard to think about what the questions are that have uncertain answers. Best of all is when I can think of questions I cannot answer. Using these, we spend days and days discussing, telling stories, posing questions, making connections. It all fits the restlessness I feel about repeating things and the boredom I experience if I know what the outcome of the class will be. It also seems to create the conditions for many of the students to do some very deep learning about ethics and morality.
It doesn't seem as if we ever cover all of the material I plan. That seems fine to me. If a discussion is good and new questions are coming up, I will stay with it for a week. If a new topic seems important, I will veer away from the plan. I realize that I have much greater liberty in this than many teachers. The nature of my disciplines, Theology, Film, and to a great extent English--certainly Creative Writing, do not have the same need to cover all the chapters that I would suspect Biology has. In addition, I teach in a private school which does not observe the same obsession with Common Cores and standardized tests that some schools seem to suffer from. My students are generally motivated and willing to go with me when we wonder about what utilitarianism has to say about the latest GM auto recall, but not all of them are and I am always pleased to see how some young men and women who do not care so much for school enter into the conversations.
So Palmer's book is encouraging me to think about identity and integrity. He talks about what makes these up in detail and I will plan to reflect more on those ideas as we go along.
Also on the reading today is The Sun Also Rises, which is what I will retire to now. I will begin teaching Hemingway next week for the National Louis Modernist American Literature class. This week they are considering the poetry of the modernist period. In the meantime, it is great fun to get reacquainted with Jake and Brett.
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