Awakening learning:
Dancing  with  Words  to  the  Music  of  one's  Own  Ideas

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY: Academic definitions of teaching and of learning are varied and often are phenomenological. But the etymologies and uses of the words teach and learn, as found in Webster’s New World Dictionary (1984), provide me with concrete images on which to build a philosophy of teaching/learning.  Teach comes from the Old English word for token and the German zeigen or to show (1459). Synonyms include instruct (“implies systematized teaching”), which comes from the Latin instructus, meaning “to pile upon, put in order, erect” (730); educate (“stresses the development of latent faculties and powers”), which comes from the Latin educere, meaning “to lead, draw, bring [out]” (444)--think educe and also think of how a midwife draws out a baby being born; train (“implies the development of a particular faculty or skill”), which comes from the Latin trahere, meaning “to pull” (1508); and school (“a disciplining to endure something difficult”), which comes from the Greek scholē, which means “leisure, that in which leisure is employed, discussion, philosophy, school” (1274).

Learn (“implies a finding out of something without conscious effort”) comes from the Latin lira, meaning “furrow” and once meant “to teach” (804). Synonyms include ascertain (“implies a finding out with certainty by careful inquiry, experimentation, research, etc.”), which comes from the Old French acertainer, meaning “to [make] certain” (80); determine (“stresses intention to establish the facts exactly”), which comes from the Latin determinare, meaning “to set bounds” (384); discover (“implies a finding out, by chance, exploration, etc., of something already existing or known to others,” which comes from the Latin discooperire, meaning “to discover, reveal”; unearth “(“implies a bringing to light, as by diligent search, of something that has been concealed, lost, forgotten, etc.”). 

Awaken the spirit of learning ~~
Draw it out, help it be born, help it discover and bring to light that which has been concealed, lost, forgotten . . .
PictureImage courtesy of Microsoft ClipArt
Knowing the derivations of these words
and the images they connote
gives me direction in my teaching.
I need to show my students
the tokens/signs of language,
the language
of whatever content we are studying,
and help them interpret
those tokens/signs for themselves.
I need to build
my students’ language and other skills
in an orderly manner,
 to lead them with solid examples,
and to give them the freedom
to make their own examples.
Sometimes I may need to drag them
into trying new forms of expression
or new methods of studying,
to encourage them
to keep going and to allow time
for them to ruminate on what we have read,
discussed, heard, seen, or even been distracted by.
I need to ask pointed questions
to help my students furrow their mental fields--
to break up clods of contradictions
and mental presuppositions,
to unearth nuggets of information,
and to bring to light new faculties
they didn’t know they had.
I need to prod them to awaken their own spirits of learning and to teach
those who want to learn
how to dance with words
to the music
of their own ideas.

Teaching Methods: Introduction

My responsibility as a teacher is to orchestrate the external factors and to nurture the internal processes to help students acquire:
  • knowledge of particular content,
  • knowledge of the means to acquire more content knowledge after the course has ended,
  • knowledge of the ethical considerations associated with particular content knowledge,
  • insight into how the content interconnects with other fields of study and with life outside academia, and
  • experience using various tools with which to communicate the knowledge acquired.
My thinking and my practices have been influenced by people such as:
  • Knud Illeris, Kieran Egan, Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey, Nels Bohr, and Nel Noddings (theories of knowledge and learning)
  • Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and John Comenius (educational philosophy)
  • Peter Smagorinsky, Peter Pokorný, and Erving Goffman (semantics, hermeneutics, framing, and questions of meaning)
  • John Stephens and Peter Hollindale (ideologies in literature, especially children’s literature)
  • Jack Zipes and P.L. Travers (cultural and metaphysical studies of children’s literature)
  • Shelby Wolf and James Moffett (pedagogies of teaching literature to children)
  • Sheridan D. Blau and Robert Scholes (pedagogies of teaching literature in general)
  • Anne Haas Dyson, Marie Clay, and Ruth Culham (processes and pedagogies of children’s writing)
  • Wolfgang Iser and Louise Rosenblatt (questions of author, reader, and text)
  • and many others.
Over the next few pages, I explain how I work to orchestrate external surroundings and to nurture internal internal processes to facilitate learning. I also provide information about teaching with technology and some sample literature workshop exercises.

Teaching: Orchestrating  the  external factors

teaching: nurturing the internal processes

Teaching:  Adapting to Varying instructional Modalities and environments