Teaching Philosophy
Bear with me here, as I like to think of myself as a “Radical Teacher,” but one who sometimes fails, one who occasionally gets caught up in what needs to be taught rather than what students are learning, or equally important, what I am learning. At the same time, my parents blessed and cursed me with what is commonly called “The Protestant Work Ethic.” These forces compliment and complicate each other, but for the most part, I enjoy the ride. The following helps to remind me of the constant challenge and awesome responsibility of my profession.
radicalteacher (rad-i-k’-l-te-char) n.
Radical Teachers provide a student—rather than a teacher—centered classroom; share rather than transmit information; aide student growth and empowerment by drawing out what is already there and latent; respect students; have a relatively coherent set of commitments and assumptions from which they teach, and they are aware of it (this awareness distinguishes them from rocks, mollusks, and non-radical teachers); possess the capacity to listen well and the self-control not to always end silence with the sound of their own voice; believe that theory and practice are not separable; are concerned with process as much as product; realize that good intentions are not enough; do not divide neatly into four component parts: scholarship, teaching, service, and institutional need; understand that radical teaching is holistic: it assumes that minds do not exist separate than bodies and that the bodies or material conditions, in which the potential and will to learn reside, are female as well as male and in a range of colors; know that thought grows out of lived experience and that people come from a variety of ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds; understand that people have made different life choices and teach and learn out of a corresponding number of perspectives; work with themselves, their classes, and their colleagues to discover, name, and change sexism, racism, classism, and heterosexism; demand a lot from their students; e.g. “we can refuse to accept passive, obedient learning and insist upon critical thinking” (Adrienne Rich); do not assume they know it all. (Pat Ennas)
Officially, I was a student longer than I’ve been a teacher. Futhermore, I still consider myself a student in so many ways, so Walt Whitman’s “When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer” resonates with me; I’ll quit teaching when it does not.
