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 /\ /\ /\ /\
(229-333-5947) /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__/\ \/\
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/\"If you want to climb mountains,\ _ /\
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