This September, I started another semester of teaching History in college. Sixteen years. Sixty-four semesters. For thirteen years before that, fifty-four semesters, I taught GED to adults as they worked on their high school equivalency diploma. That’s a lot of semesters to be doing the same thing.
I don’t know if I ever really understood the axiom, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in 1849.
Except for maybe now.
It seems that every year academia is inundated with new ideas in teaching concepts, methods and ideologies, along with revised student goals and objectives. Administrators with newly minted degrees in Pedagogic Theory, Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Leadership, and Educational Technology, and let’s not forget the enviable PhDs and the EdDs that come to us with bursting energy about ways to make education better.
The enthusiasm with which these professional educators bound onto the scene and try to enlighten us is nothing short of breathtaking.
But from where I stand, it is tiresome, routine, and well, just plain boring.
For thirty years, I have stood in front of classrooms and simply taught. I do not have degrees in educational pedagogy, theory, or classroom management, nor do I have any secrets for meeting student leaning objectives or state requirements that will ensure the continued flow of financial support from various levels of government funds. I only have my framed master’s degree, that tells me and anyone who asks, that I have acquired the state mandated amount of credits and have mastered the research and content knowledge which allows me to teach subject matter in my area of concentration.
My method is beautifully simple. I teach the student, not the curriculum.
Impossible? Probably, in the scope of what is expected of us to accomplish in the classroom. But I follow the prescribed learning objectives, adhere to required grading and reporting procedures, and complete all the required yearly training that in truth is just a rehashing of the information from all the semesters behind me.
Impractical? Absolutely. It requires from the ones called teacher, professor, or instructor to give more time than you have in a day, more energy than you can find hidden in any glucose stores in your body and more patience than even God gave Job.
My method does require more than just an overarching lesson plan in the classroom because this is where the gloves come off. I have one lesson to teach but have thirty minds that need to learn it. In my book, that means I have thirty lessons to teach.
Every day.
Multiply that by three classes a semester, and well, that adds up to a lot of (non-existent) lesson plans. How can one plan for that?
You can’t.
I have stuck to my methodology now going on thirty-one years.
Successful? You bet. Because when we teach the student, we meet them where they are; at that tiny fissure where information meets curiosity and creates the freedom they need to open their minds. And I can see when it happens; the moment the light goes on, when it all makes sense to them.
When they want to know more.
I will continue to adhere to the new ideologies, the new technology, the new methods and the rehashed training sessions because as an employee I am required to do so.
But as an educator, I will continue to educate.
One student at a time.