Floren Home | Latest Version: 17 November 2007

EXPERIENCES, OBSERVATIONS, AND THOUGHTS.  The opening to Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach strikes a chord with me:

I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy.  When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illumined by the lightning-life of the mind--then teaching is the finest work I know. //  But at other moments, the classroom is so lifeless or painful or confused--and I am so powerless to do anything about it--that my claim to be a teacher seems a transparent sham.  then the enemy is everywhere: in those students from some alien planet, in that subject I thought I knew, and in the personal pathology that keeps me earning my living this way.  What a fool I was to imagine that I had mastered this occult art--harder to divine than tea leaves and impossible for mortals to do even passably well! (1)  (27 October 1998)  Top of page

BOOKS:

The Courage To Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998) Parker Palmer, Writer, Traveling Teacher, Senior Associate of American Association for Higher Education, Senior Advisor to Fetzer Institute. PH.D. UCBerkeley.  SEE PARKER PALMER PAGE. (27 October 1998)   Top of page

WEBSITES.  Over the past year, I've collected a few bookmarks to places on the Web that offer encouraging and inspiriting ideas for me as a teacher.  Here's a beginning:

Getting Results - professional development program by League of Innovation, with Power Point and video sections on creating community, planning for outcomes, active teaching and learning, moving beyond the classroom, teaching with technology, assessing teaching and learning

Metaphors for Teaching:  Mirroring an idea in Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach, teachers consider completing the statement, "Teaching is like being a __________."  Teachers see themselves as travel agents, architects, conductors, archaeologists, sailors, athletic coaches, gardeners, air-traffic controllers.  In each case, a person in the field is photographed and becomes the subject a Website created for the field of work, and including an audio stream with an explanation of the work they do.  Also on the Webpage is a photograph and relevant comment from a teacher who considers how the particular position may serve as a metaphor for teaching.  For example, Bill Lowe, musician and member of the Big and Phat Jazz Orchestra of Boston, Massachusetts (directed by Daniel Ian Smith, also the lead alto saxophonist) talks about how conductors of jazz musicians lead so as to bring out the best in each voice.  Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't, but always the conductor is forceful, directive, and loving--but not arrogant.  The teacher expresses a similar idea; teaching is bringing out the voices, finding ways for the individuals to speak while retaining the beat of the whole composition that is the classroom time together. (Rev. 19 November 2007)   Top of page

EVALUATION.  How am I doing?  Sometimes I know; other times, it helps to get a view from a distance--in which case one or more standard evaluation processes might provide insight.

SGID. Small Group Instruction Diagnosis--a simple, active teaching assessment process--elicits descriptive and evaluative remarks from students in a way that encourages and supports a productive feedback loop (student to student, student to classroom consultants, consultant to teacher, teacher to consultants, teacher to student, and so forth).  The dynamic and complex information provided by the SGID process ensures three outcomes important in authentic classroom assessment: (1) what works in the classroom is recognized and encouraged, (2) student complaints are turned into constructive suggestions based on what will best help them achieve their learning objectives, and (3) the teacher reviews the diagnosis and discusses what is doable and not doable with the class at their next meeting to develop a plan that makes use of the information gathered in the SGID process.

DISTANCE EDUCATION.  Can we teach students without a live classroom environment?  Can they learn from us without the benefit of being with us bodily?

Fluency in Distance Learning - from the League for Innovation

MiraCosta College Program for Online Teaching

Cable's On-Line Pedagogy Distance Learning Portal.  Cable T. Green, a doctoral student in Communication at The Ohio State University and the creator of this extensive Website describes his work as follows: "Without a sound pedagogical approach to instructional design, an on-line course is little more than linked text. In this site, I explore research and literature reviews of on-line learning, philosophies, theory and pedagogy of various instructional strategies, the development and design of an on-line course, tutorials for instructors to learn how to create and teach in an on-line learning environment, and how to assess and evaluate your course."

Floren's Teaching Notes