I have recently realized that asking my students (future teachers) to
remember their own school experience (and how they were sometimes hurt by
teaching) so this memory can guide their teaching may not be always helpful.
Many students learn how to survive in school rather how to learn with the
teacher and other students. This learning about survival they carry to
their teaching to repeat the cycle. They often separate their own student
experience from discussions on teaching exactly because they are guided by
survival in both cases.
What do you think?
Eugene
PS Diane, I really like your quote from Valerie Walkerdine! I think that
progressive teaching (or whatever it is called) is guided by the expected
impact on others (not only, of course).
-----Original Message-----
From: diane celia hodges <dchodges who-is-at interchg.ubc.ca>
To: sense who-is-at swbell.net <sense@swbell.net>; xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 1997 3:28 PM
Subject: teachers' memories
>"...[I]f we are the understand what is happening... we need to stand back,
>not trust the obviousness of the taken-for-granted and yet remember to look
>at what it means to be a teacher, a pupil, a parent, a child. We look at
>ourselves. We have tools. The great and injurious act of forgetting which
>happens in institutions of teacher education means that students come,
>teachers come, as I once came, and forget, obliterate, imagine they know
>nothing. The insertion of the new practice of psychology, or any of the
>other disciplines, uses that forgetting. Nevertheless, it also tells us
>what it is like to be a pupil again. And we can use that knowledge too.
>But, of course, that is to explode the boundaries between theory and
>practice."
>(Valerie Walkerdine, 1991, _School Girl Fictions_; p. 17)
>
>diane, using a quote to speak for me, once again. :-)
>
>
>At 11:38 PM 10/27/97, Valued Customer wrote:
>>I'm not suprised! Many of the secondary school teachers in Lubbock
>>Texas are graduates of Texas Tech University, yet my colleague showed me
>>a flier printed by a fourth grade teacher which nearly drove me mad.
>>The grammar was so poor that it took me three readings and a red pen to
>>understand the first sentence! I laughed, but what else could I do? Who
>>will stand up and admit that this teacher was once a student of
>>his/hers?
>>
>>
>>Allison Boroda
>>Department of Human Development & Family Studies
>>Texas Tech University
>>home e-mail: sense who-is-at swbell.net
>>Tech e-mail: aboroda who-is-at ttacs.ttu.edu
>>phone: (806) 762-8145
>>
>
>
>
>"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
>Ani Difranco
>*********************************
>diane celia hodges
> faculty of education
> university of british columbia
> vancouver, bc canada
>tel: (604)-253-4807
>email: dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca
>