The conversation(s), I mean. You know, about how teachers need to be engaged, too, in order for their passion to come through. Gardner Campbell posted this quote by Jerome Bruner that was a good reminder of the fact that, while the tools and the opportunities to connect and talk are new, not so many of the ideas about school and learning and teaching that some folks, myself included, are (re)discovering:
2. Jerome Bruner, from the Preface to the 1977 revised edition of The Process of Education:
Let me turn finally to the last of the things that have
kept me brooding about this book–the production of a curriculum.
Whoever has undertaken such an enterprise will probably have learned
many things. But with luck, he will also have learned one big thing. A
curriculum is more for teachers than it is for pupils. If it cannot
change, move, perturb, inform teachers, it will have no effect on those
whom they teach. It must be first and foremost a curriculum for
teachers. If it has any effect on pupils, it will have it by virtue of
having had an effect on teachers. The doctrine that a well-wrought
curriculum is a way of “teacher-proofing” a body of knowledge in order
to get it to the student uncontaminated is nonsense.
Amen. A double amen to the conclusion of his post (you should really read the rest):
I yearn for that effective surprise and for the cognitive economy of
powerful symbols, for the structures and the illuminating honesty, the theme parks and the sandboxes, to make of courses of study episodes of buildable wonder.
Now, he’s a university professor talking about university courses. But I want my daughters’ kindergartens to be "episodes of buildable wonder." Don’t you?
Bud,
Your comments are very true. I want my children to be engaged in these episodes throughout their schooling. As many of us have discovered as we use these tools, it isn’t really the tools but the freedom that it gives the teacher to allow students to have those episodes. I believe that one of the things that is stifling great adoption of the tools is this very fact – it creates opportunity where students see that they can have control over their learning and that really scares teachers because they don’t know what will be the final outcome. It’s much easier to control the flow of information so that the outcome is predictable – and safe – than it is to allow students to create responses that may go in directions that the teacher does not want to go. I’ve struggled with this myself as I allow students to create their own documentaries – what is the limit I will allow students to explore? What is “acceptable” and what isn’t? By allowing students to explore, we need to change how we view education and that can be very difficult for both teachers and students. It really forces all parties involved to explore the nature of learning, especially in the outcome driven times in which we are living. Thanks for the great link!
Moments of wonder and delight – that’s what learning should be! “Knowledge” has expanded beyond what is teachable – what we are teaching today is how to be excited about learning more!
Bruner often surprises and delights with his language. I love the idea that courses of study should be “episodes of buildable wonder.” What does that look like for teachers and students and how does technology help us create those episodes for us all?
Blog Response to Bud Hunt:
I agree with Bud when he talked about engaging teachers with their own material. Teachers are individuals who are charged with the opportunity to create “episodes of buildable wonder”, regardless of grade level. A teacher who isn’t passionate about the subject he/she is teacher cannot possibly hope to pass that passion (or lack thereof) onto the students. A passionate teacher is more than just entertaining. A passionate teacher can show his/her students what they find fun and interesting in that particular subject, as well as inspire curiosity and induce wonder and joyous amazement at the world they were previously ignorant to. To become an effective teacher, one must first be a passionate teacher. Doing so can make an individual teacher more than just a mere person talking to an audience. A passionate teacher can show his/her students a world that they have hoped to see; hoped to experience. Passionate teachers literally open our eyes, and make the learning process more than a stack of homework. Learning becomes an exciting journey that the student looks forward to everyday after that.