Doctor Grandma

Subtitle: Joined by the Grace of Great Things.

This is comments on Chapter IV of the book, “The courage to teach,” by Parker J. Palmer. I give credit to the author. This chapter turns away from the inner self of the teacher, and turns toward the community that happens in a classroom.

(my own thoughts) It’s an interesting thing about groups of students in a classroom. Each class develops its own quirks and habits, its own community. There develops a bond among that group, for that hour+ that we are together. It develops over the semester, and then it dissipates, never to return. But each class is different. Each community unique. And it is not just a synopsis of those individuals in it — it takes on its own persona. It is very interesting. Some are congenial, some are always lively, some tend to erupt with emotion, some are not in tune and quiet. The same instructor in all. Some of it may have to do with time of day. Early morning classes tend to be awake. Late afternoon classes are much more difficult to maintain. Everyone just wants to end their class time and be done for the day. 4:00 or 5:00 classes are unbearable. The teacher does her best to be lively at the beginning, but has difficulty maintaining enthusiasm.

Over time, as an instructor, you also develop an uncanny ability to talk and discuss for an hour and sense when it is time to end. I can be engaged for 60 minutes and know when I have 10 minutes left without looking at my watch. It’s a 6th sense. Even so, I often put 2 students in charge of telling me when it is a certain time. Gives them some station in the classroom, something to keep them aware of time.

This chapter mentions various models of community in a classroom, from therapeutic to civic to marketing. Under civic model, Parker makes the observation, “Truth is not determined by democratic means.” Many may disagree with that, but there is truth in it. If you take a vote amongst 100 people and 85 agree the world is flat, that does not bring truth to a classroom. The world is round. We are an amazing blue ball in outer space with a thin band of atmosphere that keeps us all alive. So truth must be based on science. Votes are good to tell us how the class feels, but they do not necessarily bring truth.

The Marketing model is the one alive today! Schools are businesses, run by the profit margin. Students are to be packaged into neat little executives, successful in showing all they’ve learned at the end of 4 years and making connections to land them a great new JOB. Students and parents are consumers of a product. Ideal teaching, to me, allows students to explore reality, to know how to find information and make their own assessments. I like to send students out to do surveys or interviews and compare their answers to research articles. If we can find the time to share what they’ve learned with one another, then that may come close to a community of learning.

This chapter suggests that physicists have found sub-atomic particles that behave as if there is communication between them. Their behaviors affect each other, which is absolutely amazing, as if “there is a holistic underlying ORDER whose information unfolds into the… order of particular fields and particles.”

“Astronomers have found exploding stars that are the original seedbeds of the atoms that make up your body and mine.” — Wow, what a sense of “community” and order in the universe.

So truth is relational. We have to be open to truths shown in science while at the same time be open to learning from each other. Keep an open mind throughout the process. While testing reality with science, it is not possible to stand back apart from it all and be completely “objective”. Objectivity is an impossible task. We are all parts of stars! We are all, basically, affected by what we already know and that is all a part of our scientific experiments as well. We just have to remain open to the universe, to what we learn from others that may completely change how we see our reality.

The trick is to be aware of ourselves as part of something greater than ourselves, to remain in awe of the universe, to be able to consult on what part of the “elephant” we are feeling, which is our own version of reality. To be in “the grace of Great Things”. No one has all the answers. My job as instructor is not to dish out truth for them to memorize. My job is to share the knowledge of my discipline so far, and to send them out to explore a bit more on their own. (Sounds very idealistic but in practice, it means you don’t just stand there and lecture from old notes.)

Emile Durkheim said there are two types of things in the universe: Sacred and Profane. The sacred are those things that inspire AWE or FEAR, either one. They are something greater than ourselves, that sense of the spiritual or something beyond what we can see, touch, feel, hear with our bodies. Some sort of existential power. Profane objects are everyday objects with no sense of awe or fear. This chapter is about sensing community with others, understanding that we are all part of something greater than ourselves.

The exercise proposed is to write brief descriptions of two recent moments in teaching: a moment when things were going so well that you knew you were born to teach; and a moment when things were going so poorly that you wished you had never been born.” ha ha

My first response is, I don’t believe I was “born to teach”. Maybe, but highly unlikely. I believe we were ALL meant to be certain places at certain times. Meant to meet certain people and affect their lives. It may be an effect that you don’t expect. It may be a negative experience or a positive. You may be in between two OTHER people, both of whom you know, but they are supposed to meet each other– through you. That has happened 3x for me. I introduced 3 couples who later got married, and the marriages lasted. However, most of what I am talking about is not that, it’s just helping one another along, in life.

I also really have never wished I had not been born. Life is okay, unpredictable, and one thing I’ve learned by this time: Whatever comes, you can handle it! If you have a faith or spiritual base, that helps. It helps to put your trust in God, to call on spiritual forces, or give your problem to something GREATER than yourself — give it to the Universe, ask God to take it, whatever works for you. Whatever comes, you can handle it, and we never know what’s around the next corner.

The first one, for me, I would say are times when students tell me how much they appreciate me. One time a group of sorority sisters gave me an award, for being “the best a woman can be”. I do not belong to a sorority. But I can’t tell you what that meant to me. Sometimes students write notes, of their own accord, just to me personally. I have some glued into a book I kept for teaching. These mean the world to me. Another GOOD time is when students who had already taken a class with me, voluntarily came back and sat in the class again– in a different semester– just to be there. I would always look at them and say, “James, what are you doing here?” to which they would say something like, “Dr. Black, you always got somethin’ goin’ on! I just wanted to be here.” And I always let them stay. They would usually visit a couple times, and then stop.

The worst time, the one where “things were going so poorly”, I know my worst memory of all. The time I was called to the Dean’s office and he handed me some horrible letter written by a group of select students who had decided I was the worst teacher at the school. They never complained to me, never voiced these things to me, and their major professor encouraged them to write THIS letter rather than direct them first to me, so perhaps some of these untruths would not have been written, so perhaps we could clear up whatever misunderstandings they had from my classroom that they THOUGHT they had figured out, but they didn’t. It’s really too bad, for them, and for me.

I met a woman years later. She didn’t know me, but she listened to the story. Her first question:

“Did they think they were special?”

I had to reply, YES, they were a somewhat select group of advanced students in a different major from my own.

“Did you treat them special?”

Honestly, I did not. And therein was the problem. I treat all students equally in my classroom. I’ve heard some of the worst reports ever given in a college classroom, without a doubt. And when that student finished his report, we thanked him and we all clapped. The same as anyone else. It is no other student’s business to know that that student actually failed that presentation. I didn’t treat the advanced group “special”. This woman’s insight amazed me. But her insight was not the response that came from the Academic Dean.

But it’s okay. Whatever comes, we can always get through it. God is my witness and my judge. I give it to the universe. So I have now completed the exercise in Chapter 3. Now you think of your best, and your worst, moments in your OWN career and see what you put onto the page.