Welcome to this week’s issue of Traversing, as always if you find this newsletter to be interesting, if it helps to inform your thinking about progressive education or if you think it might help others, please subscribe, share it with your friends and neighbors and share your comments and questions.
Someone asked me about my teaching philosophy this week and it led me to dig up my statement of teaching philosophy that I wrote back in 2016. Those of you who have been reading Traversing for a while, will probably recognize some familiar concepts and thinkers, although in reading this over, I realized that I have not yet talked about Myles Horton, who is at the end of the day one of my most important influences. ( I am sure this will be a topic in the coming weeks) So here it is, and I look forward to digging a little deeper into these thoughts soon.
Statement of Teaching Philosophy
My pedagogical approach is based on my experience as an educator in K-12 schools and as an educator in higher education and adult education settings. At its core my pedagogy finds its foundations in dialogue, community, caring and justice. These ideals are shaped by methods that I have experienced and developed and through the thought of others, such as Buber (1996), Horton (2003), Noddings, and Giroux (2005). Fundamentally I believe the goal of any pedagogical experience is to create a community of learning where all participants assume leadership and agency for their learning. The instructor serves not as a dispenser of knowledge, but as a facilitator of the learning community.
Dialogue
My pedagogical approach is structured around the understanding the learning is an inherently relational experience. This relation typically takes the form of dialogue between individuals and groups; through discussion, Socratic seminar, debate and other interactive formats. Dialogue also takes place between the learner and text or content. The learner explores their meaning making through the hermeneutic spiral of text and context. This process occurs in individual experiences and in the collective work of small groups and the entire class. The learning occurs in the space between the subject and the object, the learner and the text and therefore my classroom is built around systems and structure of dialogue, reflection and interaction.
Community
My pedagogical approach recognizes the primacy of the learning community built in the classroom. Although content knowledge on the part of the instructor is important, it is more critical that they are able to create a classroom learning community where each individual feels safe and open to explore their learning and reflect on their assumptions and contextual understanding. This community must be actively built through intentional community building experiences and activities. This may take the form of excursions outside of the classroom, service oriented projects, courageous conversations or other experiences designed to build an appreciation for the value of every community member. The safe and productive community that is created through the shared experiences enables deep dialogue and engagement with differing opinions, ideas and understandings. In my experience the strength of the classroom community is directly related to the ability to engage collectively and individually with genuine transformational learning experiences.
Caring
My pedagogical approach is built around the belief that the act of teaching and learning is an act of caring. This is best described by Nel Noddings, “When a teacher asks a question and a student responds, she receives not just the “response” but the student”(176). The caring that the teacher expresses is deeply personal and as described by Noddings, “The one-caring, in caring, is present in her acts of caring. The one caring is sufficiently engrossed in the other to listen to him and to take pleasure or pain in what he recounts” (19). In my classroom it is my responsibility to care for the individual need of each student. I take the time to know each of them not only as a learner, but also as a human being. I believe that it is my role as the teacher to strive fully to ensure the success of each of my students. In order to ensure their success it is necessary to do more than measure their outcomes. I must also know them as individuals and provide them with the support and opportunities that they need in order to achieve their full potential in the context of the classroom and in their world outside of the classroom.
Justice
My pedagogical approach recognizes the primacy of education to serve as a vehicle for justice and a barrier for injustice. The currency of power in modern society is knowledge and in order to foster greater justice in society it is essential that classrooms navigate the relationships of power that underlie justice and injustice. In my classroom this takes place in the inclusion of non-majoritarian narratives, the use of a critical lens for all contextualized content and other forms of analysis that serve to illuminate the nuances of justice and injustice that are present in all forms of knowledge. This work is guided by four questions presented by Danish social scientist Bent Flyvberg in Making Social Science Matter; 1. Where are we going? 2. Is this desirable? 3. What should be done? 4. Who gains and who loses; by which mechanisms of power? (60) The infusion of all explorations with the deeper questions of meaning, social justice and awareness supports students in transferring the theory of the classroom to the practice of the world.
The work of pedagogy is ongoing and is continually refined through reflection, evaluation, revision and implementation. That learning cycle is present in my classroom and in my own practice as an educator. The work of being an educator in my teaching philosophy is guided by dialogue, community, caring and justice and it is an ongoing process of reflection and growth both for me as the teacher and for the learners with whom I share the experience of building knowledge and action. The goal of learning is to create spaces where new learning can take place in a fully iterative process. I create engaging learning environments that enable students to deeply explore new ideas with a critical lens so that they can then apply those ideas to the practice of living in and enacting positive change in the world.
With Gratitude
People, Places and Things
In this section of the newsletter I share people, places and things that have inspired and taught me valuable lessons about rethinking learning.
I suppose the logical thing to talk about is The Long Haul, Myles Horton’s autobiography, but I think that deserves an entire issue or potentially a couple of issues.
Instead, I would like to share some thoughts about two people who have and continue to inspire me deeply.
Nearly 70 years ago my grandfather, Rev. Dr. Genus (Gene) Ebert Bartlett, shared the following wisdom with his oldest son the late Rev. Dr. David L. Bartlett:
“It is not a very easy or carefree generation into which you have come, David. Though all men in every country hate war and fear it, we are still killing each other as though there were nothing else to do. Hatreds we had not dreamed of have overrun us like floods. But, son, you must not run away from these things. You must do something….”
Even though I have read that quote dozens of times, I still tear up when I read it.
My grandfather, Genus Ebert Bartlett was born in West Virginia in 1910 and eventually became an American Baptist minister. He held pastorates across the country in Hilton, NY, Columbia, MO, Evanston Ill and Los Angeles, CA. He eventually became the President if the Rochester Colgate Divinity School. Throughout his years of work and service he fought for justice and equality, against segregation and injustice and he fought for against war and for peace.
My grandmother, Jean Soule Kenyon Bartlett was born in 1917 in Hilton New York. She spent her life striving and working for justice and equality. Into her late 90s she could be found marching for LGBTQI rights, marriage equality, racial justice, women’s equality and any other social justice issue that needed her attention. Her unwavering commitment to the dignity of all human beings has set an example for me that I always strive to achieve.
I think about them both always, but especially during this time of year.
Thank you as always.
See you next week!
Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Print.
Flyvbjerg, Bent. Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fail and How It Can Succeed Again. Boston: Cambridge University Press. 2001. Print.
Giroux, Henry A. Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life: Democracy’s Promise and Education’s Challenge. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2005. Print.
Horton, Myles. A Circle of Learners. In D. Jacobs (Ed), The Myles Horton Reader: Education for Social Change (pp.272-278). Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press. 2003. Print.
Noddings, Nell. Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2013. Print.