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Underlying every aspect of my
philosophy of education is a simple observation, namely, education is hard
work. Learning is hard work, and teaching is hard work. It may be enjoyable
work; it may be boring work. It may be exhausting; it may be exhilarating.
But, in the end and underneath it all, the process of educating and being
educated is hard work, and there is no getting around it. But nor should we
try because hard work is inherently good and of inestimable value. Thus, I
serve my students best, not by alleviating work but, by equipping them for
the task and by removing any unnecessary obstacles so that their work might
be more productive and rewarding. As a teacher, I am myself engaged in the
work of education, and I invite my students to join me and others in this
work by providing input and direction, encouragement and critical assessment,
a place for questions and a space for mistakes.
At the center of my vision of
academic education are communities of learners — teachers and students committed
to one another in their endeavor to acquire knowledge and understanding and
to develop the skills of critical, yet generous, thinking and argumentation.
Such communities of learning are grounded upon a subject-centered model of
education (rather than a teacher- or student-centered model), where teachers
and students inhabit the same side of the epistemological divide vis-à-vis
the subject. Education is not monologue, a one-way transfer of knowledge from
teacher to student, where the teacher as priest mediates the presence of the
subject. Education takes place as dialogue, where both teacher and student
have direct, unmediated access to the subject and where both are held
accountable to one another according to what the subject does and does not
disclose about itself.
At the same time, this truly
democratic paradigm does not seek to obliterate the important differences
between the teacher and her students in their respective roles and
responsibilities. Though I, along with my students, am first and foremost a
learner, I remain their teacher nonetheless. As a teacher, I am responsible
for creating the space that fosters revelation and dialogue. I am responsible
for maintaining the dialogue as dialogue, always resisting the temptation to
transform it into a monologue, always resisting the temptation to limit my
role to that of a facilitator. In so doing, I am seeking to cultivate what
Parker J. Palmer calls the spiritual virtues of humility and faith, where
“the humility that enables us to hear the truth of others must stand in
creative tension with the faith that empowers us to speak our own.” [1]
The strategies and pedagogy that
support this vision of learning communities are multiple and varied. I find
as much value in a stimulating lecture as I do a classroom discussion or
PowerPoint presentation. In all that I do I seek to be sensitive to the
different ways people learn, for example, by developing lessons that
incorporate all of the learning modalities (auditory, visual, and
tactile-kinesthetic). With experience both as a computer technician and as a
graphic artist, I am quite keen on the use of educational technology in the
classroom, but only so long as the technology itself remains transparent.
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