Written by For the Klingenstein Summer Institute, we had to write our philosophy of education statements before the two-week intensive began. What I wrote for the experience was fine and, I think, accurately captured some of my hopes and challenges as a teacher.
But then I read the philosophy of a slightly older, much wiser teacher friend of mine who teaches at Spence in New York. This friend is also a lead teacher at Klingenstein and is one of those teachers that I might always look up to. Her philosophy inspired me to reconsider how I am approaching my awareness of myself as a teacher. Specifically, she quite meaningfully reflected in her philosophy on what the purpose of school should be.
This is, I believe, the essential question that should be underpinning all of our practices: why do we do what we do? I know on a deep, guttural level that my calling as a teacher has nothing to do with raising standardized test scores, enabling students to perfectly parse a sentence, or persistently plow through a pile of novels. So what then, is the point of school?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=068Xv-J7fEw[/youtube]
And with this question bubbling through my imagination, I watched this animation of a talk Ken Robinson gave (I’m just going to say it, Ken Robinson could give a talk about cereal boxes and I would probably love it and share it with all my friends) and I am struck by the simplicity of the idea that we should be waking up students to the treasures and passions they have within themselves. This should be the purpose of an education: to give us the freedom, structure, supports, mentors, challenges, and encouragement that young people need in order to discover themselves and what their purpose is in this world.
When I float down from these lofty ideals and settle into the day to day reality of my life and existence in the classroom, I have to keep asking myself: how does this manifest in my classroom? I teach Grade 7 English. While I could be teaching my students the skills to write a fantastic short story or how to understand metaphor in a novel, there is something more important that I can be exploring with my students. With my whole heart, I want to know: How can I use the vehicle of Grade 7 English to help my students discover their passions, talents, and purpose in this life?
Last year, my investigations with Cohort 21 were centred around personalizing the learning process with flipping my classroom: this was awesome and it was so safe. Not to belittle my work (because I am genuinely proud of what I learned), but I can challenge myself to do something more with this research opportunity. This idea, I think, actually runs in tandem with our potential as teachers: we can play it safe, we can do what is expected of us, we can tow the line, and produce the status quo…but what a waste of a beautiful gift?! We have the power and ability to change the world by changing our classrooms; why wouldn’t we engage with that?
I know of no better way to end this but with this excerpt from the Mary Oliver poem, The Summer Day:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?