I often teach a seminar for preservice teachers during
their final semester at the university. As I was preparing
for the last session this spring, I found myself rehearsing what I wanted to
tell them, ideas about how to teach that were likely not taught in their
university teacher education curriculum. Although I decided to not share these thoughts with my students, below is a draft version of what I wanted to say.
Take your stand as teacher. As a new teacher you likely feel unsure about
your ability teach, manage a classroom, work with children, etc. Regardless of these normal insecurities and doubts, is essential that you fully accept your
role as teacher. Your students do not need you be their friend or parent, they
need to you be their teacher.
This reminds me of a story Koun Franz told about advice he received
just before beginning to serve as priest at the Anchorage Zen Community. He
wrote:
In 2006,
when I was preparing to move to Anchorage, one of my teachers sat me down and
offered this advice: “Always stand in your position.” What he meant,
essentially, was to accept the role of being a priest, not to apologize for it.
It’s easy to refuse to sit in the high seat, to laugh at the silliness of
having everyone bow in your direction, to wink and say in a thousand little ways,
“Don’t worry—I know we’re just playing. I’m just like you.” People practically
beg you to do it. But my teacher’s stance was, and is, that deep down, people
do not want the priest to be just like them. They want that person to have the
strength to sit in the position of the Buddha, unflinchingly, and to speak and
act from that place. Because who else will do that?
(http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildfoxzen/2012/01/standing-in-ones-position.html)
In a similar way, your students need you to take your stand as
their teacher, to “speak and act from that place.”
Meet your students as complete, right now. Contemporary education focuses on the future and students
are portrayed as lacking what they most need for future success. Teachers are
told their job is to fill this deficit by giving students knowledge and
skills needed to succeed in college, jobs, and the marketplace, all in the future. In this way, education
is separated from students’ present lives and sends them the message that what
is happening right now is really that what is important.
John Dewey (1929) offered a radically different view when he wrote:
Education
is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. The school must
represent life—life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on
in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground. (“My Pedagogic Creed”)
Preparing students for the future is certainly part of what you do, but this effect of your efforts does not negate the importance of
meeting your students as complete human beings and honoring the process of
living right now.
Come back to the present. When feeling overwhelmed by the busyness of the day—lesson
preparation, grading, paperwork—and pressures to meet students’ many needs and
demands, bring yourself back to the present moment. This can be as simple as
noticing your breath, seeing the color of a kid’s shoe, or
spotting sunlight streaming in through the window. This is not an escape
strategy, nor will it magically make the challenges go away. However, it can
create a space where you are more likely to mindfully meet your students and tasks, to fully attend to the busyness of the day.
Embody what you teach. Your actions—what you do and how you do
it—are your most powerful pedagogy. Therefore, pay attention to how
you stand, walk, sit; the way you open the classroom door; what and how you
speak to a child; and how you react to a parent wanting to talk. Show your
students curiosity, openness, and critical thinking by the way you think in front
of them. If you want students to treat themselves and others with respect and
dignity, you, as their teacher, must embody these
ways of being.
