Sunday, October 2, 2011
Education Paradigms
I came across this AMAZING RSA Animate video called "Changing Education Paradigms". Worth a watch.
The Others
Viewer warning: Please do not jump down my throat upon reading the first half of this post, LOL. I was required to think about how we tend to “other” [(v) – using 'they', 'them', etc as a means of discrimination... not necessarily negative, but highlighting that a difference exists]. It was important for me to become fully aware of and really acknowledge my own "othering". It was a challenge for me to not only come to terms with having these types of thoughts and ideas, but to put them out here for scrutiny.
An “other” I use way too much (mostly just in my own head, in my own thinking) is “primary teachers”. This bias started right from my first day of PDP. There was “us”, the STEP (Secondary Teacher Ed Program ) students, and “them”, the ETEP (Elementary Teacher Ed Program) students. We, of course, thought we were better than them ,and they thought they were better than us. Our argument always revolved around our academic "superiority" over them in that we already held specialized degrees and were adding Education to that. To top off that already negative and über-judgmental attitude, I was in the Math and Science cohort, so “we” though we were not only better than the elementary teachers-in-training, but also than the Arts and Trades secondary teachers-in-training.
Wow.
As my fingers stroked each of the keys of the keyboard in typing that last sentence (and again in re-reading it), a feeling of embarrassment overcame me and I struggled to fight the urge to not go back and erase it or re-word it in a less offensive way. But I won’t, because that is the true start of how my bias developed. A bias that even though I am aware of it and have matured past thinking like that, has affected both my attitudes towards these educators and my practice in general.
I no longer think of secondary specialist teachers as better than primary generalist teachers. I think that the two ends of the spectrum are different from each other in many ways, but are similar to each other in many ways as well. In fact, I would say that there are more meaningful similarities than there are differences. I hold huge respect for primary educators and have no problem acknowledging that it is a job that I simply could not do – not because it is ‘beneath me’, but because I do not think that I possess the qualities that it takes for one to be a successful educator of young children.
So how am I different from my “others”? I guess I think about teaching an academic core at a secondary level to be more challenging, to be more rigorous, and to require more expertise. I know that the curriculum in these areas tends to be very specific and often quite linear, and that factors like time constraints and standardized assessments add to this challenge.
How are my “others” different from me? To start, they deal with small children. Children that need to be constantly watched, coddled, entertained, engaged, and nurtured. They require a mother’s-like love, attention, validation, reassurance, and patience. Creating that short list alone was exhausting for me – the prospect of having to do those all at the exact same time with not one, but 25-30 students is a feat that I don’t fully understand and have huge respect for those who do it on a daily basis. And this is just in dealing with the students! On top of this, primary educators have to teach the children the basics like reading, writing, and number sense, in addition to the development of many other skills that we as secondary teachers take for granted.
How are “us” and “them” similar? To list just a few of the many, many ways: We all have a passion for learning; We are interested in how people learn and cultivating our own communities of learning; We care about students and their education; We are advocates of today’s youth; We care about ‘raising’ students who will be positive contributors to society.
These similarities are far too powerful to allow any differences to be of significant importance. Allow me to make a food analogy (as for some reason that always seems to make a nice conclusion that, while being over-simplified, can act as a concept clarifier to both myself a
s the thinker/writer and to you as the reader). So secondary and primary educators are kind of like comparing berries to melons in that they are not the exact same thing, but that they are both fruits (no pun intended). But in fact, there are many types of berries and each of those brings something unique to the table. One is not necessarily better than the other, but each has qualities that add diversity to the mix. The same with melons. So it really isn’t about “us” versus “them” (or “berries” versus “melons”) as there is a wide diversity among the individual groups and characterizing the people by their jobs is not really fair. What we should do is make a delightful little fruit salad where we can recognize the contributions of each of these fruits in a way that compliments the others instead of isolating them.
An “other” I use way too much (mostly just in my own head, in my own thinking) is “primary teachers”. This bias started right from my first day of PDP. There was “us”, the STEP (Secondary Teacher Ed Program ) students, and “them”, the ETEP (Elementary Teacher Ed Program) students. We, of course, thought we were better than them ,and they thought they were better than us. Our argument always revolved around our academic "superiority" over them in that we already held specialized degrees and were adding Education to that. To top off that already negative and über-judgmental attitude, I was in the Math and Science cohort, so “we” though we were not only better than the elementary teachers-in-training, but also than the Arts and Trades secondary teachers-in-training.
Wow.
As my fingers stroked each of the keys of the keyboard in typing that last sentence (and again in re-reading it), a feeling of embarrassment overcame me and I struggled to fight the urge to not go back and erase it or re-word it in a less offensive way. But I won’t, because that is the true start of how my bias developed. A bias that even though I am aware of it and have matured past thinking like that, has affected both my attitudes towards these educators and my practice in general.
I no longer think of secondary specialist teachers as better than primary generalist teachers. I think that the two ends of the spectrum are different from each other in many ways, but are similar to each other in many ways as well. In fact, I would say that there are more meaningful similarities than there are differences. I hold huge respect for primary educators and have no problem acknowledging that it is a job that I simply could not do – not because it is ‘beneath me’, but because I do not think that I possess the qualities that it takes for one to be a successful educator of young children.
So how am I different from my “others”? I guess I think about teaching an academic core at a secondary level to be more challenging, to be more rigorous, and to require more expertise. I know that the curriculum in these areas tends to be very specific and often quite linear, and that factors like time constraints and standardized assessments add to this challenge.
How are my “others” different from me? To start, they deal with small children. Children that need to be constantly watched, coddled, entertained, engaged, and nurtured. They require a mother’s-like love, attention, validation, reassurance, and patience. Creating that short list alone was exhausting for me – the prospect of having to do those all at the exact same time with not one, but 25-30 students is a feat that I don’t fully understand and have huge respect for those who do it on a daily basis. And this is just in dealing with the students! On top of this, primary educators have to teach the children the basics like reading, writing, and number sense, in addition to the development of many other skills that we as secondary teachers take for granted.
How are “us” and “them” similar? To list just a few of the many, many ways: We all have a passion for learning; We are interested in how people learn and cultivating our own communities of learning; We care about students and their education; We are advocates of today’s youth; We care about ‘raising’ students who will be positive contributors to society.
These similarities are far too powerful to allow any differences to be of significant importance. Allow me to make a food analogy (as for some reason that always seems to make a nice conclusion that, while being over-simplified, can act as a concept clarifier to both myself a
s the thinker/writer and to you as the reader). So secondary and primary educators are kind of like comparing berries to melons in that they are not the exact same thing, but that they are both fruits (no pun intended). But in fact, there are many types of berries and each of those brings something unique to the table. One is not necessarily better than the other, but each has qualities that add diversity to the mix. The same with melons. So it really isn’t about “us” versus “them” (or “berries” versus “melons”) as there is a wide diversity among the individual groups and characterizing the people by their jobs is not really fair. What we should do is make a delightful little fruit salad where we can recognize the contributions of each of these fruits in a way that compliments the others instead of isolating them.
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