Oh Bev,
What I wouldn't do to have you teach in the room next door to mine. Somehow, I
think we might never make it out of the door to go home! We would be chatting
for hours because I would simply be wanting to pick your brain on so many
things! LOL!
Your experience is so hopeful to me...that each person had someone, a respected
other, who pushed them forward and helped them see that they could live an
intellectual life on some level. It is a powerful statement about the effect
one person can have on the lives of others. It also speaks to the power of both
having quiet, silent time to think and reflect and then the chance to share, to
speak about your thinking with others. I also wonder about your quiet teachers
who didn't share...who probably just haven't broadened their definitions of
what it means to live an intellectual life.
As for your group not being able to "notice and name" that they were smart
until they had time to reflect...I wonder how deeply they understood before
that moment . I am betting that through the exercise you put them through, they
understand more deeply and more powerfully the nature of understanding and also
their own personal interests and strengths. I think that by noticing and
naming, the understanding has deepend profoundly.
What is the main idea of your post? I see several important ideas...because
your writing is authentic. It is a descriptive text structure I think. And
so...I won't give you a main idea. There were too many important, thought
provoking ideas to choose one.
Jennifer Palmer
Reading Specialist, National Board Certified Teacher
FLES- Lead the discovery, Live the learning, Love the adventure.
"Children grow into the intellectual life around them."
-Vygotsky
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Beverlee Paul
Sent: Thu 7/31/2008 6:09 PM
To: understand@literacyworkshop.org
Subject: [Understand] more thinking about understanding
And that brings me to something else I've been thinking about this summer. And
a breakthrough understanding about Gardner's "It's not about how smart you are;
it's about how you are smart."
I realized the last day of class and all those papers were shared: these
teachers, these friends, these folk so worthy of respect, had one universal:
it really wasn't about how smart they were; it was all about how they were
smart. These particular folk were very, very, very smart - highly gifted - in
teaching and learning. And from that moment forward, they were hooked. They
saw themselves as capable learners who wanted to basically spend their life
continuing to learn--and they came to the right place to do so. Education.
WOW. Who'd a thunk it?
Now comes the place where I can hit it out of the ballpark! Each of these
people, teased into thinking about these issues by Jamika and Ellin, began
behaving as a "smart person" at that moment they understood they were smart.
BUT NONE OF THEM KNEW IT UNTIL THEY WERE ASKED TO IDENTIFY A MOMENT, sometimes
many, many years later, in our class thinking about Ellin's thinking. They
didn't articulate it, they didn't even realize it. In our discussion, they
said that it was only now that they realized when or how it was they came to
know/accept that they were smart, and that it had taken a great deal of
introspective musing. But the lack of naming it hadn't diminished their
understanding of it in this case.
Bev
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