Each day, in any given semester, I read anywhere from 120 to 160 daily
first-year
student journal entries. This morning I read 123. Like most days' entries,
some are
silly; some are poignant; some are filled with "too much information." Some
are short one
liners; some are shorter one worders; some are paragraph and pages long; some
are
superficial; some are reflective; some are deeply personal; some are voices
crying out for
help. Each entry, each day, reveals clues to the humanity of each student.
And, you
cannot believe what students are hopped onto, what pressures they are subjected
to, what
struggles they struggle with, what worries eat at them, what matters weight on
them, what
demands are demanded of them, what distractions work on them: roommates,
friends, jobs,
pregnancies, self-discipline needs, sickness, betrayal, fatigue, alarm clocks,
parents,
grandparents, cars, self-confidence issues, court appearances, sleep,
self-esteem issues,
boyfriends, time-management, confusion, divorce, discouragement, depression,
children,
girlfriends, partying, sex, alcohol, sexual preference, Facebook, working out,
concerts,
holidays, weddings, pets, sorority, fraternity, computer crashes, finances,
food, grades,
gender issues, drugs, accidents, disease, death, tests, papers, parking,
femininity,
boredom, masculinity, excitement, homesickness, weather, aloneness, loneliness,
crushes,
love lost, love gained, distance relationships, being "single," physical abuse,
verbal
abuse, tanning, prejudice, getting together, nails, breaking up, studying,
weight,
professors, coaches, GPAs, athletics, majors, hair, career futures, and a host
of other
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And whether an entry makes me smile,
laugh, cry,
cringe, or shake my head in bewilderment, I must honor each of them, for each
is very real
to each student and has an impact on each student's classroom performance and
academic
achievement.
This morning, all this reminded me of a joke. A sixty year old man
came upon a
wax sealed bottle half buried in the sand while walking the beach. Well, you
would
expect, he picked it up and opened it. Out flew a genie. In gratitude, the
freed genie
told the man he could have one wish granted. The man thought and thought. He
thought of
his sixty year old wife to whom he had been married forty years. "I want a
wife thirty
years younger than me."
"Your wish is my command," answered the genie. And, in a puff of
smoke, the sixty
year old man became ninety.
"That's not what I meant," stuttered the now fragile man.
"Ah," warned the genie, "be careful what you wish for."
Thinking of all that's revealed in the student journals, it's a warning
to be
heeded in academia as well when it comes to being student-oriented. To be truly
learning-centered, to be sincerely student-oriented, to reach the student as a
person, to
be concerned about each of them as a human being, to see the nobility and
sacredness in
each of them sounds so neat and simple, doesn't it. It seems to make such an
academic
sound so virtuous. It seems to makes a practitioner of teaching-centerness and
teacher-orientedness, someone who strives only to transmit information sound so
immoral.
It's that shift of paradigm that supposedly began when Robert Barr and John
Tagg called
for a shift in higher education from an "instruction paradigm" to a "learning
paradigm" in
a 1995 issue of CHANGE. This shift, they said, challenged the fairly passive
long-standing lecture-discussion format where faculty talk and most students
listen that
is contrary to all that we have learned about learning in the recent decades.
They said
that the "learning paradigm" ends the lecture's privileged position. In its
place, we
should honor whatever approaches serve best to prompt learning of particular
knowledge by
particular students." Makes sense, doesn't it. Sounds so easy to do. But,
is it? Is
it as clean and simple as it sounds?
Be careful what you wish for. It is not clean and simple, much less
easy. So,
here are my "messy" and challenging questions: What are the particular
students'
particular needs? How do you get to know each particular student and of her or
his needs?
How do you address each of them? Are they merely intellectual? Are they only
academic?
Are they personal? Are they emotional? Are they all of the above? How do you
separate
student needs from student wants? How do you help a student change her or his
habits? How
do you help yourself change your own habits? How do you forge the essential
shared vision
between teacher and student? Where are the agreed upon essential first
principles of
teaching, learning, and education in general? What should students be
learning? What
should be the aim of purpose driven teaching and learning? What should
students do with
their learning? That is, where is Peter Senge's visionary "why" of everything
we feel,
think, and do so? What's the route of M. Scott Peck's less traveled road?
Without
answers to these questions, you'll have a hard time turning from your teaching
to their
learning, for the way you picture yourself has a powerful effect on the reality
of the
classroom. And, you can picture it, each student, as well as yourself any way
you choose
Be careful what you wish for. If you want to change the world of your
classroom,
start with yourself. Too often many proponents of learning-centeredness ignore
the
ramifications of this paradigm shift. They really don't deal with the need for
an
alteration of our own attitudes, intentions, expectations, and acceptances.
They don't
really address the requirement to change their thinking and feeling. Changing
the
paradigm isn't enough. You've got to change your thinking. You have to
retouch the
mental pictures you have of yourself and each student. You've got to think of
yourself
and each of them not in terms of the problems such a shift creates, but you
have to
identify yourself with the promising possibilities. Remember the warning
attributed to
Einstein: "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level
of
thinking we were at when we created them."
Be careful what you wish for. The shift to a student-centeredness,
then, has to
be more than a mere change in syllabus wording. It's more than a shift from
"my" course
to "our" or to "their" course. It's more than a mere Little Jack Horner
utterance of "I
care about students and their learning" and leaves it at that. It's more than
a first day
"ice breaker" exercise that is allowed to freeze over during the following days
and weeks.
It's even more than mere replacement of one grand sounding scheme with another.
What most
academics on either side of the issue have ignored is that one crucial word in
that
seminal article. That word is "particular." It's that word which makes the
paradigm
shift challenging to say the least. Maybe "daunting" is a better term.
Be careful what you wish for. What then is the governing principle of
student-oriented teaching and learning? It's not covering the material
efficiently. It's
not assessment of learning outcomes. It's effectiveness of whatever are your
vision and
the lasting stickiness of the learning on a particular student. Let's take it
one
critical step forward. It's the effectiveness not of "student learning," but
of learning
by a "particular" student. "Particular." That's the crucial word.
Particular: unique,
each and every, separate and distinct from others, unique, uncommon and
unusual, the
exception, unique, a small part separate from the whole,
different--unique....unique....unique....UNIQUE. That is, when we talk about
learning-centered, we are talking about a sacred, noble, individual, unique
"one" we call
a student. In real life, this person is inconsiderate not to fit into a
cubbyhole. This
unique, one-of-a-kind person defies categorization, stereotyping, statistics,
and grand
schemes. It is that one student who is always the variation on the theme. It
is that one
student who is always the exception to the rule. It is that one student who is
always the
square peg in a round hole. It is that one student who is not like the rest of
them. It
is that one student who is always that statistical deviation. It is that one
student who
is always unique. It is that one student who guarantees diversity in every
classroom.
And, a classroom is nothing more than a gathering of those "one student."
Particular....
particular.... particular... PARTICULAR.
Be careful what you wish for. It's my theory of education that when we
talk of
student-oriented or learning-centered, the classroom corral comes down and the
herd
scatters. The spotlight moves from one particular professor in the classroom
to a
gathering of separate, unique, noble, sacred "particulars" in the classroom.
Tidy becomes
messy, simple becomes complex, easy becomes challenging, order becomes
disorderly, stasis
becomes movement, a snap shot becomes a film, constant becomes constant change,
calm
becomes uproar, quick becomes time-consuming, effortless becomes incessant
exertion. Each
student becomes a particular person, gets a face, acquires a name, has a story,
receives a
personality, is noticed, is valued, is believed in, is accepted with
unconditional faith,
hope, and love. Each student becomes a priceless piece of the future about
whose future
we can no longer be so cavalier. So, if we are to be learning-centered and
student-oriented, we must be concerned not merely with "students," but with
each and every
one of those variations and exceptions; we must focus on that one, invaluable,
unique
student; we must remember that word, particular.
Be careful what you wish for. It's my "chaos theory" of education.
You know what
teaching and learning, true teaching and learning, in a learning paradigm
demonstrate?
You how best to describe teaching and learning in this paradigm? Organized
chaos!
Depending from what angle you're coming, there is in effective and sticky
teaching an
acceptance of an orderly disorderliness or a disordered orderliness. That is,
a law of
chaos. The classroom is a gathering of unique, sacred, particular, individual,
particular
"ones." Each person comes into that classroom through different doors, having
walked
different roads, with different experiences, with different expectations, with
different
personal habits, with different learning habits, with different talents and
abilities,
with different potentials, with different outlooks, with different diversions,
carrying
different amounts and types of baggage. And, somehow the diverse messiness and
disruptive
difference and disorderly distinctiveness has to be harnessed, absorbed,
utilized within
the context of a threat to expected control and order in order for the
productive purpose
of learning to occur for each and every student--for each and every student.
And yes, it
is so often like an exasperating attempt to herd a proverbial bunch of cats.
Be careful what you wish for. Nothing about learning-centered or
student-oriented
is efficient, easy, convenient, neat, comfortable, or simple. Certainly,
nowhere near as
so in the throw it out there "instruction paradigm." But, as you say, it is so
human.
So, it is my position that teaching and learning ought to be treated, not as
some
pedagogical ideal and not as some panacea of method and technique and
technology, and not
even in scenic paradigm, but as human biography, as the ability or powers or
emotions or
attitude of a particular individual whom we call a teacher in a particular
situation we
call a classroom with a diversity of other particular individuals we call
students. It
ought to acknowledge the humanity of all and recognize human weakness and
strengths in
all. It ought to recognize an idealistic vision, the grand paradigm, with a
realistic
working out of things, a testing of wills, a diversity of habit and experience
and
expectation. There is something far more sobering than idealistic about this
acknowledgement. It gives the castles in the sky an earthy foundation.
With all this said and done, wish for it. Wish for it, for it holds
untold and
unimaginable and innumerable and magical possibilities.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History www.newforums.com/L_Schmier.htm
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\
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