The moments that stick with me the most is when a my student with Tourettes rolls his eyes when the students next to him keep talking during a freewrite, or when one brave student shared with the class a reflection of a deeply personal memory and a pair of students had the audacity to giggle. Or when one students asked me if it was okay if she wrote about her alcoholic mother? and how she could fit the narrative into the genre of the life place essay? and if it was okay if she didn't share it with the whole class? It's these lasting impressions that keep me looking for answers from teachers like Bell Hooks just as Malea Powell does in her essay. These moments make me want to become a better "communally focused" teacher that "sacrifices the needs of the individual for the needs of the whole"(573). For the most part, I agree with Powell's Utilitarian approach, 'what will benefit the whole class the most?', but with some of these acts of "listening" to my students as individuals, in reading their facial expressions, hearing their anxieties and acknowledging their trepidations, the individual has indeed affected my pedagogy.
I find myself reacting harshly when I see my student with Tourettes getting agitated when others are being too loud. When the girl asked me about writing about her alcoholic mother I promised her that I wouldn't put her in a position of sharing her story with anyone she didn't feel comfortable with and I changed my whole workshop activity around to accommodate that promise. The next time the two giggling students were being a disruption, I told them they could leave the class if they were done with their writing exercise for the simple fact that they were being annoying and I was sick of the disruption.
I'm not sure if my actions benefitted the whole class or not? I think some did, but not because of a calculated and philosophized decision making process that fit into focused communal pedagogy. Most of these decisions were born out of the immediacy of a moment. They were born to address, or protect, or advocate for a individual; and as much as I want to have a communally focused pedagogy, some of my students are just not ready to participate in the communal process of the classroom.
As a new teacher, I find gaping holes in my teaching pedagogy everyday it seems. I'm learning the art of "listening" to the community of the class though, and I'm trying to apply the pedagogical tools we have learned from these readings, but this essay made me realize yet another challenge I need to face. I don't think I will ever be able to NOT listen the individuals that are in my classroom. I will always look for the individual spirit that drives each one of them. So how does a teacher navigate this type of listening with a more communal one? I just wish I had a better answer to this question.
Joel
ReplyDeleteI think everyone can agree that maintaining a well composed classroom dynamic is very difficult. There will simply be some people who refuse to get on board who continually question and disrupt the process or tempo of the classroom. It is a hard thing to ignore, but I think what we must do as teachers is to make decisions that we holistically feel will benefit the class from a Utilitarian approach, as you said before. I don't feel that you were harsh in berating your students in a spur of the moment decision, but perhaps exposing your students ambivalence and recalcitrant attitudes to the class would put them under the spotlight of classroom interrogation. Simply put, call them out and make them explain their actions to the class.
Navigating the classroom and paying heed to communal listening shouldn't require us to "not" listen to individuals, but more so should require us to "selectively" listen to some more than others. Sometimes a student will say something that we can tell is meant to purposely repudiate the point we are trying to make or simply imbalance the flow of the class for the sake of simple chicanery. We can problem pose their questions or attitudes with the rest of the class, or we can assert our authority (whatever that is) in making the necessary decisions to listen when we need to, and ignore when we have to.
Jimmy and Joel,
ReplyDeleteI have really enjoyed reading both of your posts as I am currently writing my I-Search paper on the authority a teacher maintains within a communally-focused (or learning-focused) pedagogy. I think the concerns Joel brings to the forefront are legitimate.. How can a teacher act in a utilitarian manner when such an approach necessarily demands that a sort of calculus take place? Although I am an avid fan of John Stuart Mill, it is not the case that the minds of humans work this way. Instead, like Joel says, "Most of these decisions were born out of the immediacy of a moment." As Jimmy makes clear, this does not then mean that we have to abandon the utilitarian approach altogether. Because we, as teachers, are responsible for setting the framework to maximize student learning, we too have a sensibility for what does and what does not contribute to said learning. Sometimes it seems that our best (in the moment) judgment has to suffice in teaching for community.
Joel's post reminds me of the importance of listening, not only to our students, but also to other instructors. Wendy Bishop picks up on the connections we have to our stories by stating “We like and need our teaching stories” (Bishop 77). Sharing and ruminating on each others teaching stories is a way to learn from our triumphs and tribulations. It is also a way to process our interactions with our students and our reactions to them, just like Joel does in his post. I agree with Joel that ignoring individual disruptions in the classroom can by challenging and choosing to not listen to these disruptions seems like the logical solution. I also think Jimmy is right in saying that a better choice would be to have selective listening in our classrooms for certain situations. Wendy Bishop takes this idea a step further by redefining “disruptions” as “teachable moments” based on the situation. I have to admit that she lost me when she said that two students making out in the back row of class was a teachable moment because I fail to see what she was learning from it. But I think that maybe that is her point. We, as teachers, may not see the value in the challenges in our classrooms, but that doesn’t mean that these moments are not valuable to us because they can potentially inform our teaching practices.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Malea Powell when she says that “teaching is a responsibility” (Powell 578). I feel like this can sometimes feel like a burden when we think about the decisions we make in our classrooms. I used to dread my students complaints about something we were doing in class. I feel like I have been able to accept this as an occupational hazard and learned to adapt myself and my teaching style to accommodate problems. Nic is right when he says that we have learned embrace our “best in the moment judgments” while teaching. This is why it is important to listen to our students, each other, and ourselves when it comes to our classroom stories and memories. If I am able to do this correctly then maybe someday I will figure out why one of my students reading the school newspaper in the middle of class was a “teachable moment,” or I might just be less shocked next time it happens, I guess that would still count as learning something.