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What Kind of Teacher Am I |
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Written by Richard Joffray
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Sunday, 21 May 2006 |
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I am constantly reflecting on my experiences
during my time as a teacher. Perceptions of myself as well as the
perceptions from my students of me as a teacher are even more apparent
as to their importance. Positive perceptions of myself as a teacher put
together with a view of students as capable, valuable persons that can
learn and develop past what I can teach them, seem to be a key to
propagating an invitational positive learning experience1.
I have found that most of my students have a difficult time in viewing themselves as “able”1. I remember one particular student that when confronted with a complex computer coding problem said to me, “I can’t do this” to which I replied, “It’s not that you can’t it’s that you don’t know how. Neither do I, but together we can figure it out.”
This student was actually one of my first and probably one of my best successes. I was asked by my business partner to take this kid under my wing and see if I could help him out. Our company decided to pay him a small salary and he would come to my house/office 3 days a week after school and work on a project that I was doing at the time.
He was an odd student, meaning he thought of himself as very different from others his age. He had long stringy black hair and wore black eyeliner, black fingernail polish and hunched over when he walked. We will call him Ben.
When my children came into my office and saw this kid for the first time, I think their opinion of me changed completely. What was this very hip “Goth” kid doing in dad’s office? My perception of Ben was that he had a definite view of himself even if he was so very different than the other kids at school. I think that made a great deal of difference on how we started our quest for knowledge together. Not only was he open to coming to my office to be a more or less indentured code slave for something he knew very little about, but I think he felt right at home as well. In retrospect, I think my positive attitude toward Ben together with the fact that after having lived in London, England during the seventies and experiencing the birth of Punk Rock, nothing like a little eyeliner and fingernail polish would surprise me.
Ben came to work on this project after school for about six months and usually stayed for dinner at least 2 days a week. He was viewed as an equal and his knowledge during our time together flourished greatly. He would come across a stumbling block in a section that he was working on and asked for me to teach him more about that particular subject. I would give him places to read and research about it and time to do a few tests and then ask him to show me what he found.
One important concept that I remember giving him was that if he had no relationship to what he was coding, then the code would not be his. Well … that was just the seed to plant in this kid. When I finally approved his contribution to the project, I ask him to give me a guide tour of his work. Not only was it most definitely his, but he had also named all of the variable portions of this code as if they were characters from a television show called “Babylon 5”. The code inter-relationships, in the language that we were writing, were symbolic of the characters in the show.
Ben went on to write and design many more complex systems at a college in Canada. I last saw him at my oldest son’s high school graduation and he thanked me for our time together.
Ben is a constant reminder to me of how important the human elements are in a teaching environment. Viewing a student as able and valuable2 while giving them a chance to prove it not only to the teacher, but to themselves, sets an example of an invitational learning environment that benefits both factions and helps to propagate a synergy of knowledge.
Reference:
1. William Watson Purkey. & John M. Novak (1996). Inviting School Success (3rd ed.). Wadsworth Publishing Company.
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