This may sound strange, but in my classroom I try to be more like a verb than a noun. I think of my teaching life more as “events” that are constantly unfolding than as a solid, unchanging “person” who is supposedly responsible for the teaching and learning in the room. After all, nothing in this life is stationary or fixed, including me. My cells are continually dying and being reborn, second by second, and so is everything around me in the classroom. The atoms in the air come to my students and me from vast distances, and they’re gone before the class is over. Process is everywhere and stasis is nowhere. In my classroom, I am a new idea every moment, and then a new action, and then another new idea. It happens continuously, with no pause. It’s verbs, not nouns. Who am I? I am “Laughing” or “Pointing” or “Speaking” or “Smiling”, not a lackluster, cast-iron person called “the teacher”.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
This may sound strange, but in my classroom I try to be more like a verb than a noun. I think of my teaching life more as “events” that are constantly unfolding than as a solid, unchanging “person” who is supposedly responsible for the teaching and learning in the room. After all, nothing in this life is stationary or fixed, including me. My cells are continually dying and being reborn, second by second, and so is everything around me in the classroom. The atoms in the air come to my students and me from vast distances, and they’re gone before the class is over. Process is everywhere and stasis is nowhere. In my classroom, I am a new idea every moment, and then a new action, and then another new idea. It happens continuously, with no pause. It’s verbs, not nouns. Who am I? I am “Laughing” or “Pointing” or “Speaking” or “Smiling”, not a lackluster, cast-iron person called “the teacher”.
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