Hanging

Had an interview this morning, at a school I'd quite like to work at. I'll find out by tomorrow, end of day. If they want me, they'll want me to start on Monday. That's pretty quick, and I'm sure it'll cause some friction with the team I'm leaving behind... but I'm game.

What cannot be taught

It seems that lately I've come upon several different instances of people saying something like the following:

"____________ cannot be taught. It must be experienced."

where the __________ is filled in with whatever topic, content, knowledge, skill, or outcome is under discussion. This always seems to me to include some sense that the speaker is trying to impart a special status on ________, to establish that it is a unique sort of topic, content, knowledge, skill or outcome, because (unlike other things) it can't be taught, but must be experienced.

This drives me a little nuts, because it suggests, tacitly buried in the sentiment, a very problematic definition of teaching: That when we teach, we're expected NOT to engaging students in any sort of experience. And yet we know that, in order to be effective, meaningful, and lasting, in order to actually result in *learning*, teaching MUST rely upon students' prior experiences, and must BE an experience, itself. As John Dewey said, "education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."

Otherwise, I might just as easily fill in the blank with absolutely any topic, content, knowledge, skill or outcome. "Math cannot be taught. It must be experienced." Yeah, even that.

Update a long time coming...

Haven't been keeping up here, which is sort of a shame... So, details on what's changed in my life as a professional educator: At the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year, I started teaching environmental science for the first time (finally! science!) It was a hell of a challenge, both because I had a few behaviorally challenging groups of freshmen, and because I was making up the curriculum as I went (often literally, from week to week...) That, and the fact that I was really feeling disconnected from my AP Calculus students (burning out on *their* low motivation to succeed at calculus) were, more than I'm generally comfortable admitting, part of my decision to leave the classroom in January: see, back in November, I applied for and then was offered a job as a program manager, helping (along with one other program manager) to run the district's National Board Certification program.

Yes, for a little while there, I let it get too hard for me, and that's part of what led me to bail on teaching. Of course, the fact that the opportunity looked both prestigious and interesting was a big part of it, too. I recently saw someone, offering job-choosing advice to a third party, write that "a useful heuristic is to do the thing that the fewest number of people have the opportunity to do..." and this definitely fits that category. At the same time, I *do* have a passion for what National Board Certification is and what it can do for teaching, and so I thought that this job would be something that I'd be able to passionately and vigorously pursue, and be excited about on a daily basis.

But, as it turns out, my heart really is in the classroom. I'm casually looking for teaching jobs, again-- but I'm in a position where it makes sense for me to be picky. I'm not desperate to leave this job, but I am eager to get back to doing what I feel good about...

Mind you, a big part of why I'm motivated to (finally) update with this post right now has to do with my inability to deal with my co-worker. I might post more about the lousy interpersonal dynamics there, later, but for now, I'll just note that I worry a bit that I'm looking at returning to the classroom as just an opportunity to run... to run from what's painful and feels like failure right now, in the same way that (to some degree at least) I ran from teaching a year ago.

I don't think I have an answer on that, right now. But I'm looking for teaching jobs, all the same.