I am drafting a paper on the art of teaching and decided to do some blogging so take this for what it is, ideas sloshing around in my head:
1. Most organizations like NCATE talk about teachers having knowledge, skills and dispositions. The people I read seem to suggest that the knowledge and skills part are more scientific, yet certainly required. It is the dispositions that make knowledgeable, skilled people into artistic teachers. They weave information and strategies together to create a learning space fo their students.
2. The image of weaving comes up several times in the reading I did along with other images such as bridge builder, who makes connections. Ayers uses a more general image of teachers as creators of spaces and experiences for students but refers to the bridge. So does Perrone who wants educators to build bridges to students, finding out what they are interested in and empowering them to extended learning.
3. The arts can inform teachers’ practice: ie, using Stanislavsky’s ideas about what makes a good actor. And Mary Oliver’s description of the poet seems to help describe what a teacher is doing.
4. Good teachers are reflective. They never take their role for granted but are constantly working to improve.
5. Good teachers know themselves and have a strong identity. (See Griffin p. 293 who quotes Palmer about knowing thyself.) Griffin talks about also developing student self-efficacy. “I must first see my students and myself clearly before I can select the appropriate tool.” (Griffin, p. 296).
6. Trying to define quality teachers is difficult and often at least at the government level focuses on certification and experience rather than actual practice. A teacher is someone who has taken certain courses and passed certain tests. But there is certainly the possibility that you could do all that and not be an effective teacher.
7. Artistic teachers have a different kind of relationship with their students. They listen to their students, include them as equals in the class.
8. There is a tension between training and education (Ayers). And Perrone talks about the different between teaching you to read (training) and helping you learn to love to read (education). Perrone wants us to look to the larger purposes. And those larger purposes seem to focus on developing creators. Perrone quotes Horne from 1917 about the need for teachers to be artists who don’t care so much for a neat desk but help students to deeper understandings.”
9. People who write about the art of teaching are worried about school reform and technology, that both have the potential to take the art out of teaching as they try to regulate and define something that is often mysterious and not particulary scientific. Starnes is concerned that teachers are just reading scripts rather than being active creators.
