Sympathetic Teachers

For the past couple of weeks my yoga instructor has been away so I've been learning with another teacher.  I've been with the same instructor for about a year and I've gotten used to her ways.  Our fill-in instructor is actually the studio owner and a more experienced teacher, but I'm used to what I'm used to and I'm finding the change challenging.

The differences in how each teaches got me thinking about how learning and the relationship it is based on works.

My regular instructor pushes herself and her students.
It works for me.

I'm the furthest thing from a yoga expert but I enjoy the process and I've gotten better at it in a year of practice.  My regular instructor is very focused on form and pushing through physical barriers.  Her own practice is flawless.  Our current instructor is much more mentally focused, asking us to be mindful of what we're doing and de-emphasizing the physical side of things (though I still find her classes very physically strenuous).  Neither is right, but they are very different in how they demonstrate their mastery and what they focus their students on.  I've enjoyed the change but I've bonded with my regular instructor and I'm looking forward to getting her back.

The personal nature of the relationship between a master and apprentice is based on choices by both.  Masters tend to select for apprentices who they can work with, and vice-versa.  Back in the day when apprentices were unable to select their masters this wasn't the case, but nowadays you see this self-selection all the time.  When a student finds a teacher they share a wavelength with they tend to latch on.  Variety is the key to this selection process.  I probably wouldn't have stuck it out (yoga is hard work) if I hadn't connected to the instructor's approach enough to overcome the difficult early months.

Another philosophical thought from my regular instructor.
She wants you to develop quickly, find your limits and
then push through them. In that struggle is found yoga.

In my first year of university I asked my history TA how she knew what to focus on.  She laughed and said it was all about the prof, why else would she be doing her Masters in Scottish history?  That personal relationship is an important part of a student's willingness to put up with the pain of learning a discipline.

In the education system you get the impression that this individualism is a bad thing.  Teachers are encouraged to adopt whichever educational philosophy is in vogue and be ready to move on to the next one when the next book comes out.  Most experienced teachers have learned to not get caught up in this kind of thinking (one of the key failures of professional development).  It tends to be the game of educational leadership to push a school-wide vision of teaching in order to establish some kind of standard.  Teacher assessment uses checklists and fill-in-the-blank templates based on the school system's idea of an ideal teacher.  This implies that there is only one way to teach properly which would kill any chance of a student finding a teacher who speaks to them, unless your students are as generic as your teachers.  When the system assumes surrogacy for learning, human relationships are diminished and the ability to learn is compromised.

Ease of learning is another aspect of this problem.  I like my yoga instructor because she doesn't make it easy, she demands hard work but she's quick to praise both the effort and the improvement that comes from it.  Many students came and went but this only reinforced the success of the ones who stuck it out.  This is the opposite of the everyone succeeds approach in the current education system.  Learning is not easy, nor should it be, but that doesn't mean a teacher should be cruel or dismissive, quite the opposite actually (watch Whiplash for a complex look at this idea).  If learning is a challenge (and someone is trying to sell you something if they say it isn't) then a teacher should offer an individualized and sympathetic means of accessing a discipline rather than making an already difficult task harder.  Empathy is implicit in teaching, but especially so when it's between a sympathetic student and teacher - their shared ideals allow them to tackle ever more complicated learning on the road to mastery.  Not only is this an emotional support while dealing with difficulties, but it's also an aid to communication.  Much less needs to be explicitly stated when you're working with someone you understand.  I'd actually argue that mastery learning can't happen without this relationship.

The concept of edutainment seems to have infected all levels of the education system.  Fun, happy learning where the teacher must provide so much entertainment value that students don't even feel like they're learning (!) is the mantra of modern education.  Expecting students to put up with difficult lessons and experience failure isn't the way nowadays.  The vast majority of the coddled students I deal with wouldn't have come back after the first week in my yoga class.

Perhaps the gee-wiz, 'learning is fun and easy' philosophy of education is really another attempt to undermine the pivotal personal relationship between teacher and student.  When students aren't expected to overcome any difficulties and can't fail you also don't need to depend on the personal bond between teacher and student to encourage a student to withstand defeat, build resilience and eventually experience the kind of confidence that isn't systemically assumed.

That muppet knows mastery learning!  The modern education
version would be, "just show up (optional)
and we'll get you a diploma."

I was looking for a challenge when I started yoga.  I was feeling stiff and old and I was willing to work at fixing it.  Being dared by my instructor to push beyond the obvious discomfort I was feeling only worked because I respected her approach to the practice.  The first time I found my toes again or got heels down in downward dog I was ecstatic.  It took me months to get there.

Almost a year later I weigh 20lbs less, my flexibility is always improving and I find yoga much less painful than it once did.  It wasn't easy and I was tempted to quit a number of times.  The day after often felt like I'd been 'hit by the yoga truck'.  I was able to see improvement, but it happened slowly and sometimes I regressed.  Trust and respect in my instructor is what got me through the urge to quit early.  Why would my instructor spend all this time on her students who stick it out, pushing herself to demonstrate her practice in order to benefit us?

I've taken many aspects of my instructor's practice and made it my own.  Her practice is uniquely her's, but as her student I've been able to closely observe and internalize various aspects of her practice as well as her overall philosophy in order to develop my own yoga.  As a teacher my approach tends to be copied in part by like minded students (the incompatible ones aren't even aware there is an approach, they think it's all about facts).  It's thrilling for me to see a student tackle a difficult problem and see a bit of myself in it - it's almost like I'm the parent of their practice.

I speak with the voices of the sympathetic teachers in my life, any good student does, but if we continue to push for a systematized version of teaching that de-emphasizes the human connections through which we develop resiliency and master challenging learning, we'll end up with students who are unable to do anything other than exist within an ineffective education system.

We should be celebrating differences in teachers because they all speak to different students and allow a wide variety of learners to find their own way to mastery.  The standardized, generic teacher who follows the lesson plan template using the educational philosophy of the moment is no teacher at all (though you sure could pay them less!), and they would be teaching to a standard student that doesn't exist.  Had I walked into that on my first night of yoga I would have walked out again.

All Hands On Deck

One of those fun things about Twitter is that you can end up communicating with unexpected people.  The other day I got a response from the Press Secretary for the Ontario Liberal party.  

We're in a bit of a mess in Ontario.  Economically we're on the wrong end of history.  Once Canada's manufacturing heartland, now that North Americans don't make anything and just wait for shipping containers to arrive, Ontario has fallen on rough times.

To resolve these economic issues, and perhaps to catch some soft righties in the next election, our liberal minority government has decided that they don't have to negotiate contracts, can mandate teachers, doctors, firemen and other unions back to work, and will drastically scale back our agreements to balance a budget that got blown to pieces by a financial crisis the public sector had absolutely nothing to do with (bankers aren't being looked at to chip in on the deficit).

From the twitter feed: 

The STRONG ACTION being referred to by the Liberal Press Secretary strikes me as disingenuous. From what I've seen of what's coming, strong action means freezing the pay of the lowest paid teachers and extending the pay grid so that the lowest paid teachers take even longer to make what more senior teachers doing the same work make.

Teachers new to the profession are a pretty easy target.  They have little or no say in the union that will arbitrate the contract and they're so desperate for work, dangling at the bottom of a seniority system that cuts them first as our population produces less and less kids, that they're not likely to struggle too much as they get neutered.

My comments on twitter stand.  If this is really an emergency that requires STRONG (or even just drastic) action, then let's get serious about streamlining the education system without simply attacking its weakest employees.  My greatest fear is that gutting teacher pay will reduce the quality of the profession and ultimately jeopardize Ontario's excellent record in education.

EQAO is a massively expensive standardize testing system that we brought up from New Jersey that has produced nothing of value.  The US system which is so enamoured with standardized testing has dropped like a stone through world rankings, while Canada and Ontario especially have continued to produce some of the strongest students in the world.  Finland, one of the few places ahead of us, has removed standardized testing entirely.  Instead of cutting the income of thousands of young teachers across the province, that same generation you're frustrated with for not powering the economy like previous generations did, cut the EQAO, the entire thing, bin it.

Know how many places publicly fund Catholic schools like we do in Ontario?  None, just Ontario.  If we're really in a financial emergency, why is this a sacred cow?  Amalgamating Ontario's English Public, French Public, Catholic English and Catholic French schools into one system would allow for economies of scale and would prevent unfair distribution of resources.  It would also be fantastically cheaper than the current four tier system.

I have no problem with people funding their own education if their religious views and pocket books are deep enough, but expecting an evidently broke government to do it seems ridiculous. How about some real strong action Dalton?  If you're going to attack the youngest, lowest paid teachers, why not address gaping inadequacies in the system?  

I used to teach in the GTA.  My public school worked hard to integrate Canadians from all over the world, many of them ESL.  Whenever we saw Catholic school data from the same area, their ESL programs were drastically smaller.  Hearing them then crow about how high their literacy test scores were in comparison just made me angry.  When you can pick and choose your teachers and students to create a mono-cultural climate, you're likely to do better in standardized tests because you've standardized your population.  Let's get rid of that.

This isn't an indictment of religious or social expression in schools either.  My current school runs a religiously based international mission to great success, and it is open to all denominations.  At previous schools I've seen energetic and popular Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and other student groups who had a very positive influence on the school community.  Then again, I've also seen gay-straight alliances doing that, but only in public schools.

My last shot is at the union (of which I'm an active member).  Selling out our youngest members isn't a solution.  If this really is an 'all hands on deck' emergency, let's spread the joy.  How about teachers who stay past their retirement date not getting paid sick days?  These teachers are making top salary and are often staying on to plump up their already sizeable pension (one that will evidently have evaporated by the time boomers are done with it).  For every ten of them you shake loose into retirement, you'd be able to hire ten young, energetic new teachers at a 50+% saving... and then they could afford to start families, and buy houses and cars, which, you know, help the economy.

If this really is an emergency, I'm left wondering why the lowest paid people on the totem pole are bearing the brunt of it.

If this really is an emergency, I'm left wondering why we aren't cutting redundancy and pointless systems.

If it's just politics, then I can expect to pay for everyone else again and no amount of reason will change that.  My gen-x scepticism is running high.

Speaking With Dead Voices

I'm still mulling over the discussion we had around what teaching is at EdCamp Waterloo the other week.


In teacher's college what seems like a long time ago, one of our profs tried to get us to explain what the process of learning was in a typical classroom.  He asked, "is what  you're doing more difficult than surgery?"  The general answer was, "no, surgery requires precision, great expertise and can kill people if done wrong; it's more difficult (and important)."


Our prof went on to try and describe what happens in a classroom as we teach people new ideas in a way that allows them to retain the knowledge and make it their own.  It's complicated in social, psychological and physical ways, and you don't get to focus on one person at a time, like that surgeon does, you typically have 90 students in circulation each semester and you're dealing with 30 at a time.  Considering the circumstances, it's amazing that teaching and learning happen as well as they do.


At Edcamp a discussion wandered into focus on this, and the complexity of the process is quite staggering.  If you truly care to understand how we teach and learn from each other, you've got to recognize the uniqueness of this ability (#11) in humans.

"Children expect to be taught, a vital difference (between humans and apes).  While most apes can copy, they do not teach each other."

Teaching isn't purely a learned behavior as many would have you believe... we're hard wired to learn!  This begins to explain why classrooms are able to teach as well as they do; it wouldn't work as well in a room full of chimpanzees.


It also helps explain why teaching is such a personalized set of skills.  Many teacher's colleges, educational experts and administration would love to develop that perfect teaching algorithm that allows them to streamline the process, make it cost effective and minimize differences in education.  This approach fails to recognize the complexity of the process.


When I became a teacher, I was surprised at how much I was imitating those teachers who had a positive effect on me when I was young.  The job is challenging, overwhelmingly so for many people.  Those who stick it out and begin to develop some mastery in this very slippery (psychological, sociological) profession might have used the same process.  


When I was a student, long before I thought of becoming a teacher, I was subconsciously apprenticing.  From Mr Rattray in grade four to Mrs Thomas in grade six, Mrs Fraser in grade seven, Mr Stern in grade 13, I was seeing what worked in master teachers, and then subconsciously imitating it when I suddenly found myself in front of a class years later.


I find it strangely comforting to sometimes find myself speaking with those voices, some of which are long gone from the Earth.  It's one of those ways that teaching reaches deep into what we are.  But if you're unlucky enough to be in a college that doesn't help you understand how vital you are to the process (by over-emphasizing curriculum, or administration, or control), you will end up a cardboard cutout, someone not being human in this most human of activities.


You might try to approach teaching as a science.  If you do, I suspect you are either not going last in the profession long, or you're going to get out of classroom teaching as soon as  you possibly can and administrate.  There is something unique and personal to every successful classroom teacher.  Some can be the stern disciplinarian and be very effective as that teacher, others can be personable and relaxed with their students and approach the same level of effectiveness as a teacher from a completely different path.  Whatever it is that they do, if it's 'put on', disingenuous, then students won't do what they have a predisposition for: learn.


Those that try and distill this most complex of professions, one that actually defines us as a species, into a statistically, standardized process fail to grasp that teaching and learning, more than medicine, science or even religion, is what makes us uniquely, and powerfully human; it has been the single most important defining factor in our evolution as a technologically advanced species.