Of Grog and Mutiny

I sat in a large heated room today for roughly six hours with forty other professionals and listened to two very energetic women attempt to redefine what most of us believe to be "good teaching". I have a pretty grudging respect for that these two do; in the space of just a few years they are undertaking the task of transforming how we go about doing this most important of things: educating the youth. My problem is not in any of the details that they present or suggest, nor in their methods, but in the aggregate of what they and other "educational coaches" all over the country are doing, namely changing teaching from an art into a science.

Like most people, I have a clear memory of teachers from my past: which ones I consider "good" and which ones I do not. But here's the first important distinction - nowhere in my vocabulary, then and now, do I equate "good" with "skillful". And the name of the seminar is Skillful Teacher. While others might suggest that these words are synonyms or at the very least bear a great deal of similarity in their definitions, I would argue the difference resides in the sense of their art and hence is a bit undefinable by these pedagogic experts.

The teachers I count as really important in my life were ones who had a great of content knowledge and applied it not in a gimmicky or multi-faceted way but who challenged me to take ownership of the information or skills, to make them my own. Or more specifically, didn't force me to use them/it in *any* particular or specified way. They were tools, in a sense, to solve larger problems ahead. Example: knowing the rhythms of John Donne's poetry might never have been an applied skill but then coupling that knowledge/ability with other forms of writing or editing made my prose all the more ornate, made my references and arguments all the more poignant. But it didn't take a game of round robin or whatever technique is in fad for me to get that. To that end I think good teaching is not so much about the HOW over the WHAT.

I don't however want to mis-speak however. For I am certain everyone who might read these words has at one time (or more) in their lives encountered the knowledgeable teacher who would not be able go hold the attention of an art lover in the Louvre. So is this the science part? No, this is the passion part. Again, the teachers memorable in my life were passionate - they LOVED beyond all reason what they taught and to not become infected with that love and interest and passion was to be something other than humans. And certainly I have sat next to folks whose lack of passion and humanity made them seem a bit otherworldly. There is a sense, I think, in the best teaching of something so fun and exciting that to not join in and not become a part of that world is somehow illogical.

That all consuming passion is the art that I don't think this seminar or any class that I have taken about "teaching" can ever relate or delineate. I don't know if I achieve that sense of passion and commitment in my classroom - I hope I do - but I know that watching good teachers do what they do is a thousand times more instructive than the six hours I will probably spend tomorrow learning about this science that people are now convinced constitutes teaching.