Teachers are busy. Pressures to prove progress constrain us (although not all equally).
Exams exist and define much of what we do (unless led by those with courage).
Schools are people places. The tides of influence and ambition form dangerous eddies, where individual limitations compound into narrowing institutions. We all do this, and we cannot direct our tides of culture.
I am fortunate to work internationally. The schools that I have chosen to work are quite neutral. I can make of my classroom what I will, for my perspective is the most part. That neutrality exists because my students value ambition and kindness, and enjoy a foundational base of cultural and intellectual literary.
That base was not always the case. I have taught students of radically different demographics, and the tensions we faced were significant. My organisation and charisma made life easier, if tired. But one thing was similar: I wanted to make those around me think.
Thinking is experiential: let’s draw attention to the artifice of the classroom. Some exam thinking and writing is peculiar to the writing only in exams: let’s be honest about that.
Thinking is social: we need to be challenged, to see how what we hold dear might stand on shifting sands.
Thinking is fun: let’s playfully provoke our passive perception of the world. Our perception and the world are not as separate as we think.
Regardless of what we aim to do in the classroom, let’s make us think.
Think of the assumptions I had in starting this blog: how have they changed?
Think of the consultants who roll relative to others with their ambition: what did they want?
Think of the results my classes have achieved: what do they mean?
Think of the times I have read and listened and conversed with passion: will those times end?
Not yet. Not yet.
