Is the Great American Teacher Dead?

 2/26/Week2

Is the Great American Teacher Dead?

 

Abstract

Around 300 BC, as night fell on an Athenian street, a dejected-looking man was seen looking in his head down and sorrow in his eyes. His name was Demosthenes, and he had just failed it again, in one of his attempts at Public speaking. Satyrus his friend enunciated the same words in a way that was more powerful and compelling. Public speaking and teaching are cousins. At the core of both is communication. The concept that education is more than just exposing people to the facts, but it also came from the heart it needs teaching that is passionate, positive, inspiring, inviting, meaningful and transformative, addresses world problems, shifts paradigms, and attends to fragile self-concepts within its recipients. So, what is the status of great teaching in the U.S. today? It is difficult to tell. It will likely remain unresolved for decades, if not centuries.

Views from the Outside and the Inside coming to America

Italian anthropologist, E.L. Cerroni-Long (1993), spent time at an American university and came to the conclusion that American students were not very deeply intellectually. And also, Italian Anthropologist, Rik Pinxten (1993), who also studied the U.S university system, implied that he agreed with some American thinkers at the time who felt that the American intellectual and intellectual discourse at universities was, for all intents and purposes, dead. She felt that U.S universities were replete with competitiveness, lack of compassion, cultural casualties, and psychological insecurity. A Dutch Anthropologists, Rik Pinxten (1993) He asserted that the American university worlds is not the place where inspirational, deep and awe-inspiring teaching can flourish. Arum and Roksa (2011) studied more than 1300 undergraduates at 24 institutions. Their findings were that 45% of the students studied showed no significant improvement in complex reasoning, critical thinking, and writing from the time they entered college to end of their sophomore years.

Closer to Home
 An internationally recognized expert on the human brain, John Medina (2008) claims that students remember meaning before details (Medina, 2008). This sense of meaningful engagement in a great cause can significantly contribute to the success potential of any undertaking. It can work many miracles of the mind, even in extreme circumstances. Revolution as the patients found life suddenly imbued with a novel sense of meaning and purpose (and obviously also imbued with unawareness of purpose (and obviously also imbued with unawareness of the oncoming horror). He encourages educators to return once more to our youthful, ideological roots. Teachers should be more entertaining, a little more stimulating, and a little more entertaining, and a little more inspiring. If one believes he or she is engaged in a great work, one’s comportment and bearing need to be proportionately reflective.

Purpose and Paradigms: The Need to Go Deep Metacognition and the Great Teacher

A facet of metacognition involves the presentation of alternative paradigms to facilitate the student’s reflection upon his or her own models of reality, possibly raising him her to new levels of consciousness. He basically says that the great ones inspire their students with attention-grabbing ideas, testing general assumptions, tackling captivating problems, and examining the paradigms that inform social reality.

Mining the Rich Cross- Cultural Landscape

Speaking of cultural differences, researchers have discovered a positive correlation between human achievement and being raised in an environment that is rich in cultural diversity.

Human Universals and Great Teaching

Many universal elements permeate all cultures and leave mark on the emotional and cognitive fabric of our lives. Knowledge of some these elements can be instructive in the art of teaching. Researchers discovered that the ratings quantify good teaching, if we do our best to align ourselves with the principles of sound instruction such as meaningfulness, metacognition, Transformative Education, cultural introspection, cross-cultural exploration.

Teachers on a Mission: Making Things Meaningful

One of the threads emerging from the above studies seems to be a considerable lack of depth and a concomitantly severe lack of inspiration. David E. Purple (1989), criticizing the field of education, has written, “The profession must begin with the perspective of hunger, war, poverty, or starvation as its starting point, rather than from the perspective of problems of textbook selection, teacher certification requirements, or discipline policies. If there is no serious connection between education and hunger, injustice, alienation, poverty, and war, then we are wasting our time, deluding each other, and breaking faith”

Transformative Education

This mode of learning is replete with deep, personal reflection; reflection that potentially pushes back the parameters of reality. The authors stated (in a quotation attributed to Dirkx) that a truly transformative learning experiences is one where “we are left with the feeling that life will not be as it was before, that this experience has created a sense that we cannot go back to the way we were before the experiences”

Cultural Self-Examination

Every culture possesses a unique system of requirements for obtaining prestige and avoiding shame. Sigmund Freud showed how rules for feelings good are built into the child in each society (Becker, 1973). However, the artificiality and irrationality of some “cultural rules” often lead to disastrous personal circumstances. For example, schizophrenia, which is definitely associated with chemical imbalances, subsides more rapidly in some cultures rather connections and the mental models they constitute will then be at the student’s permanent disposal to assist in future acts cognition (Ivers et al., 2008).

The Scientists and Psychologists Get Involved Brain Research

Research on the human brain has found that continuing to engage the mind can assist in keeping it healthy similar to the way physical activity keeps the body healthy (Kennedy & Reese, 2007) Research shows that memory is augmented if an event is reviewed immediately after it happens (Medina, 2008). Occasional group work in class may also be a way to bring about the variety necessary as required by the “Ten Minute Rule.”

Brain Research and Invitational Education Come Together

All facets of teacher-student interactions with students should never escape personal scrutiny. As, a teacher, it would no hurt to occasionally reflect upon one’s preconceptions. It is essential to keep student’s dignity and fragile self-concept always on one’s radar for a multiple of reasons. Classroom subcultures need to be developed that are rigorous, yet at the same time have the tendency to enhance one’s self-actualization rather than detract from it.

What It might Be

The Dynamic of Delivery

Medina says, “We don’t pay attention to boring things” Besides the examples, the stories the Ten-Minute Rule, and the group reviewing, as teachers, it behooves us to work on our deliveries. From all research showed that instructor enthusiasm accounted for almost 40% of the variation in student responses concerning whether or not the class afforded them new skills or knowledge.  From all the research, teaching to be a science, it is also an art form.

A Feeble Try

There has obviously been a lot of research on good teaching. Even though it is difficult to quantify, some common threads can be found throughout the research. The following assumes adequate lesson planning and instructor competence in the subject matter.

1.      Positive teacher-student relationship

2.      A good “delivery”

3.      Edifies rather than damages a student’s self-concept

4.      Clarify (through the use of many examples and stories)

5.      Encourage deep and critical thinking

6.      Variety instead monotony (do not forget the Ten-Minute Rule)

7.      Grading and workload is generally perceived to be fair

8.      Enthusiasm and zest for the topic

9.      Meaningful to real world problems

10.  Potentially transforms one’s world view from one of uncritical acceptance of cultural dictates to one of deep, reflective, and compassionate thinking.

Conclusion

 According to my research in order to one wants to complete the mission, the first order of business is to take care of the troops. If we take care of our students, our mission of educating them will be greatly facilitated. May we never be perfectly research, Invitational Education, and human universals, we will, at least, be doing our best to take care of our students as they march off to engages the many hostilities and challenges of life.