Re(2): confused in california

Katherine Goff (Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu)
Thu, 08 Jan 1998 11:41:39 -0700

diane writes:
>
>...even if you know that, say, dialogue is more useful than
>monologue? that constructivism is more productive than drill?
>
>Yous ay teachers "need most to learn..." - in terms of action, say, if you
>wanted to do something locally which might make use of what you know about
>how teaching works,
>
>then it isn't about only what the teachers "need to learn"; but about
>what a school community needs to put in place to make possible
>
>kinds of dialogic interactions; kinds of communicative possibilities which
>traditional classroom structures prohibit...

If a teacher has the time/space to self-evaluate, then _she_ will be able
to make that decision and I(or others) may help by providing information
and support. But if a teacher is required to use dialogue more than
monologue, how can anyone know (believe, hope, etc) that the teacher will
be willing or skilled enough to pull it off or then even if she is both of
those things, that the students/parents/community will accept the new thing
that she is doing. This is where the context plays such a big role. This is
what makes best, or even better, practices so difficult to generalize. In
my attempts to articulate a collaborative, deliberative process for
school/ing, I try to depict an dialogue (I do think that's "better")of all
the people involved because, as someone else said, it's impossible to
change one component of a complex system without changing the whole system
to some extent. So why not involve the whole system, explicitly, from the
start?

I am struggling also, not to give up on School, tempting though the idea
is. Universities can work on changing things at their end, I work in my
classroom and do what I can. Which lately, sounds mostly like defending
teachers.

Kathie

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Life's backwards,
Life's backwards,
People, turn around.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Sinead O'Connor and John Reynolds
Fire on Babylon: Universal Mother^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ouray.cudenver.edu/~kegoff/index.html