I had begun the semester with the intention of breaking away from this endless cycle of catering to the quotidian and listening more intuitively to the whispers and silences that I am often too rushed to make full sense of. In spite of having listed it as one of my top priorities for almost 3 weeks in a row, I had't blogged in several weeks. Like I have done in previous semesters, I have once again managed to fill up my time with hours of planning, teaching, responding, e-mailing, administering our university's writing center...but haven't added reflecting (alone or with others) to my list of "priorities."
Yesterday, I began reading Christine Pearson Casanave and Miguel Sosa's Respite for Teachers: Reflection and Renewal in the Teaching Life: "To many," write the authors, "get caught up in the routines prescribed by others--administrators, governments, textbooks--routines and prescriptions that presume to create a sense of community within the school. [...] The result is that we neglect to reflect on our own learning and to listen closely to our students or to look up from our learning occasionally and marvel at a new moon or become absorbed in a piece of music. Our lives, our teaching and learning, are diminished as a result."
What do we begin to miss out on in this rush to meet goals and check off items from our ever-expanding lists of to-dos? How does our working lives suffer when we do not allow the time to savor the moment, to listen to the silences, to tease out the inaudible whispers in our own classrooms?
I find myself going back to one of our class periods last week. Our cross-cultural composition class had just begun working on the literacy memoir assignment. We had finished discussing the assignment sheet and had watched Yusuf's literacy memoir, "Everyone Has a Gift" (http://daln.osu.edu/handle/2374.DALN/539). Before students came to class, they had blogged about Yusuf's literacy memoir and had posed questions about what they would have wanted Yusuf to have added to his narrative.
So many students wanted Yusuf to have spoken more about "Africa." Why didn't I ask my students how a 21-year old college kid who had migrated the United States when he was 12 years old speak for an entire continent? Why didn't we wonder about Yusuf's Somalia or even perhaps his native village? What difference would it have made if I had spent another five minutes in talking about the war that Yusuf referred to and how it may have impacted his literacy?
Yesterday, I began reading Christine Pearson Casanave and Miguel Sosa's Respite for Teachers: Reflection and Renewal in the Teaching Life: "To many," write the authors, "get caught up in the routines prescribed by others--administrators, governments, textbooks--routines and prescriptions that presume to create a sense of community within the school. [...] The result is that we neglect to reflect on our own learning and to listen closely to our students or to look up from our learning occasionally and marvel at a new moon or become absorbed in a piece of music. Our lives, our teaching and learning, are diminished as a result."
What do we begin to miss out on in this rush to meet goals and check off items from our ever-expanding lists of to-dos? How does our working lives suffer when we do not allow the time to savor the moment, to listen to the silences, to tease out the inaudible whispers in our own classrooms?
I find myself going back to one of our class periods last week. Our cross-cultural composition class had just begun working on the literacy memoir assignment. We had finished discussing the assignment sheet and had watched Yusuf's literacy memoir, "Everyone Has a Gift" (http://daln.osu.edu/handle/2374.DALN/539). Before students came to class, they had blogged about Yusuf's literacy memoir and had posed questions about what they would have wanted Yusuf to have added to his narrative.
So many students wanted Yusuf to have spoken more about "Africa." Why didn't I ask my students how a 21-year old college kid who had migrated the United States when he was 12 years old speak for an entire continent? Why didn't we wonder about Yusuf's Somalia or even perhaps his native village? What difference would it have made if I had spent another five minutes in talking about the war that Yusuf referred to and how it may have impacted his literacy?
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