Help me....Help you

I never really understood the familiar phrase, “teaching the same year 30 times,” that is often thrown around in the world of education. If you really think about it, how is that even possible? This chapter just confirms my personal theory that you would have to be pretty dimwitted to just ignore the fact that you have thirty different faces staring back at you…every single year. Chapter 7 spells out the obvious things that we have been exploring over the course of our education on, well, education. Some examples are: catering to the needs of diverse learners, recognizing the different forms that learning take place, building upon prior and meaningful knowledge, and using a variety of instructional techniques to reach each and every child. It even mentions the idea that, heaven forbid, the teacher may not know the answer to the question of a curious and relentless child. With all of these things coming into play in the classroom environment, how is it possible to teach the same year again and again? I think I have the answer: the unyielding teacher.

Let’s be honest, nothing in this chapter is ground-breaking information that we didn’t already know, that we haven’t already heard over the course of the education program, either in our various mounds of reading, or from the mouth of one of our brilliant professors.  All the information is already lying idly by, somewhere deep in our subconscious. I think the author knew this, that’s probably why it was laid out in bullet point format. Quick reminders of information we already knew, but organized in an eye-pleasing fashion, just begging to be highlighted. But I don’t believe that’s what the chapter is initially about; rather, I think the underlying message is stated beautifully in the very last sentence, almost small enough to miss, “Can you help me tame you?” Who doesn’t appreciate a good metaphor or solid example to relay a message? The entire book weaves the example of the boy and the fox in and out of the chapters. I would like to believe the author’s underlying message is this: be modest enough to know that you will learn just as much, if not more, from your students that they will learn from you. And of course, all your students are different. You just have to be patient and flexible enough to adapt to each situation, and student. I love the line from the movie Jerry Maguire, “help me help you.” Just like Jerry Maguire, the boy needed to be humbled in the sense that just as he has much to teach his “student”, he has much to learn. Not that I’m going to go around yelling at each of my students in some emotional climactic Hollywood breakthrough “Help me help you!!!” Rather, those hints will come from students in subtle ways as I put into practice the teaching techniques that were mentioned previously, luckily, each is highlighted in my book.