From the podium

One of the first things I got as a teacher that I thought was a perk was the fashioning and the delivery of a podium to my room. It took seven days for the Engineering department at my school (I call them that because the word maintenance just doesn't seem to cut it for these guys ^_^) to make the podium and about half a day to deliver it. When I received it, I welcomed it warmly; now I didn't have to lug around the textbook while I presented the lesson. I noticed one afternoon that the paint has started to rub off on its lower left corner. I realized that's where I rested my forearm while talking to my students. There you go, instant character!

I was thinking about that and how when at the Teachers' Lounge there was a discussion on student-centered learning. In the olden days, so the conversation goes, the teacher was the font of wisdom. If you wanted to learn it, you asked the teacher or the teacher gave it to you. If the teacher didn't know it, you didn't learn it. He or she had the book, the grades, the knowledge, and the students were there to receive. Now, with the advance of technology, it is the students who have the knowledge in the form of a massive, searchable font of data called the Internet. In some cases the student actually learns effectively from this source. It then has become the teacher's job to supervise this flow of knowledge and to make sure that the students are learning. Now, if you didn't know something, you looked it up--you didn't ask your teacher first.

I remember at first being a little let down by this train of thought. No longer were teachers the respected learning sources they were in the past. But as I walked Kmart today in search of a squeegee for my chalkboard, I realized that it doesn't have to be all bad news. First of all, if the teacher didn't know something, it would be easy for him or her to look it up, too! And what's more, we teachers would be more motivated to do so, improving the flow of communication between the teachers and students. More importantly, I realized that I didn't become a teacher so that I could act as a "font of wisdom". My job is not really about informing students... it's about making students realize the impact of their learning on their lives, and encouraging them to use what they've learned to make their lives better. That's actually more difficult. Most importantly, it dovetails nicely with what I've learned during the assessment and accountability conference. In this shifted paradigm, the teacher's task of assessing his or her students in making sure that learning is occurring is even more important! And since students cannot anymore be expected to have learned the same things in the same way, multiple perspectives assessment becomes more of a priority.

Teaching is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, yet every time I think about it, I feel that this was the positive change in the world I was meant to accomplish. And hopefully, next week, I can do it all with a cleaner chalkboard.

Thanks for reading.

Song in my head: Led Zeppelin, "Over the Hills and Far Away". First heard as a ringtone on a now-defunct phone owned by a friend.