Attention: Great teaching artists out there!
When I think of school starting I want to run and hug my own kids. They inspire me to work harder and find more solutions. As school starts soon for so many teachers I wonder if they get nervous to re-kindle their artistry as I do. I think so often "how am I going to get started" or "how can I remember how to connect with kids in real-time." Last year during Covid-19 when things were really tough, teachers bonded, united, and found new ways to do so many lessons. Teachers looked at their lessons objectively and discovered what was important and what could be let go of. As we re-boot this year, will we still remember to re-boot and re-kindle those lessons?
Driving into the first day of school today made me wonder about teacher artistry. I wondered who had written about it and what was significant. I discovered a great article on my i-phone and was reading just a bit while driving and then decided to continue this pursuit later. Important realization! (I love to multi-task!)
The Modern Learners community has a great article posted talking about the importance of discovering your teaching artistry and what the characteristics look like, but the most important aspect is the effect on kids learning. The quote I carried in with me today:
“There is one goal [of education] that, if not achieved, makes the achievement of all other goals very unlikely. That goal is to create those conditions that make students want to learn; not have to learn but want to learn more about self, others, and the world. The overarching purpose of schooling and its governance is to support that goal, i.e., to create and sustain contexts of productive learning supportive of the natural curiosity and wonder with which children start schooling.
Contexts for productive learning are no arcane mystery. They require that adults start with where the child is: his or her curiosities, questions, puzzlements. The artistry of teaching inheres in how to capitalize on that starting point so as to enlarge and support what the child wants to learn. That is to say, you seek to help the child forge connections between what he or she wants to know and what the child needs to learn. I say artistry because those connections cannot be forged by a fiat that requires the child to conform to a predetermined or calendar-driven program. You can teach by the calendar, you cannot productively learn by the calendar. This is not permissiveness or a mindless indulgence of a child’s whims and fancies. It is a way of “hooking” the child, enlarging the child’s view in line with the maxim that the more you know the more you need to know.”
Yes, I agree, learning that is motivated by students' desires and balanced with what needs to be achieved is the over-arching principle to stand next to for the year.
