Task 3

CHAPTER III THE HIDDEN WHOLENESS: PARADOX IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

Palmer writes that we are trained to “think the world apart,” dissecting it into either-ors, but we need to learn to “think the world together,” embracing opposites and appreciating paradoxes.

The principle of paradox can guide us in thinking about classroom dynamics—and in designing a teaching and learning space that can hold the community of truth.

In what ways have you experienced “suffering” as a student teacher? Has your suffering had any redemptive quality to it; that is, has it made you heart larger? What would help you deepen the redemptive quality of the suffering your experience in your work?

Good, I have had some bad experiences while teaching. I have experience "suffering" in class when I asked the students something and they do not want to do it, for example when I have asked to read a paragraph to one student, and he or she has told me "I do not want teacher", he or she has made me feel on the spot or on the death zone because I have not wasted too much time on paying attention to only one student meanwhile I was teaching around fourty students. Also the feeling of suffering sometimes has helped me to improve my own teaching and better as a student teacher. Suffering have made my heart larger because it have helped me to have self-control, self-steem, and self-confident as a teacher to know how to treat my students when having experiences of suffering.

Name some of your key gifts or strengths as a teacher. Now name a struggle or difficulty you commonly have in teaching.  How do you understand the relation between your profile of giftedness and the kind of trouble you typically get into in the classroom?

Some of the strenghts I have are classroom management, self-confident, eye-contact, facility for talking in public, reflexive thinking about my own teaching, and usage of many techniques. But some of the struggles or difficulties I have in my own teaching are the management of the time, and the moment of the "death zone" because at that moment, I just ignore it and continue working but up to now, I do not know how to overcome or pursue that.

Describe a moment in teaching when things went so well you knew you were “born to teach” and compare it to a moment in which things went so poorly you wished you had never been born! Name the gifts that made this good moment possible—not the techniques you used or the moves you made, but your qualities.

A moment when things went so well I knew I was born to teach was in my teaching practicum I because I was teaching  seventh grade students, and all the procedures I followed up were working with them, and I thought "this is a piece of cake", but when I was teaching eighth grade students in the teaching practicum III, samething happened to me, as the picture can show you, a student threw a paper ball to me, and the ball stopped on my head, the student made me feel so angry, and I made him go out, then I reported him to the principal. It was a horrible situation. Some gifts that I applied in that moment was making the student feel welcome to the classroom again, and making him feel comfortable. That was my attitude with that student.

Palmer discusses six paradoxes of pedagogical design (pp.73-83). Choose one to focus on.  Share examples of teaching environments you have experienced where this paradox is honored.  Have you ever been in a classroom where only half of the paradox was honored while the other half was ignored? Describe what that classroom was like.

I consider that, the principle of paradox can help us to think in classroom dynamics and to design the kind of teaching and learning space that hold a class. The space means a set of factors that we as teachers have to take into account such as: the physical arrangement and the feeling of the room,the conceptual framework I build aroud the topic we are studying, the emotional ethods I want to facilitate, and the ground rules. 

Also, in teaching and learning we need to think in "paradox" as Palmer said as "a creative tension" through which our awareness as a teacher is heightened. We need to see paradox as electricity in which 2we are holding opposites together that create an electric charge that keeps us awake".

In addition, according to Palmer the space that works best is one shaped by a series of paradoxes, but if I would've to choose the first paradox which is:

"The space should be bounded and open"

I like this paradox because the teacher has to set the teaching and learning space by using a question, a text, or a body of data that keeps  us focused on the subject at hand. Also because the students are free to talk, but their talking is guided toward the topic, and I agree with Palmer that space without boundaries is not space, it is a chaotic void, and in such a place learning does not occurs because "a space is to be a space". It must be as open as bounded. Open to the surprises that always come with real learning, and open to many ways to reach the end. Bounded to remind us that we must stay alert for clues to our destination that is teaching as part of our trip, and then to reach the end.

The previous paradox is honored where I had a experience in the classroom, that is when I was doing my teaching practicum of Didactic with bachelor second year students, as I used the Direct Method in my classes, I combined that method with the paradox I chose before. It means that I let the students speek free, but according to the topic we were studying, I used to make use of questions to set the previous knowledge they had to star the class. I made them feel free to participate , but I guided the activities because I think that they distract easily. In fact, I tried to be bounded and open at the same time for keeping respect, and for letting them bring up new ideas.

What questions are you living at this stage of your life—from “How can I get up in the morning? To “ How can I become a good teacher? Are the questions you are now living the ones you want to live? If not, what questions would you like to be living? How might you hold these questions at the center of your attention?

This last stage I am living is regarded to "How can I get up in the morning" to "how can I become a good teacher" because I think that I am in a process in wich learning never ends.

Task 2

A CULTURE OF FEAR: EDUCATION AND THE 

DISCONNECTED LIFE

FEAR IS A POWERFUL FEATURE OF BOTH ACADEMIC CULTURE AND OUR INNER LANSCAPE—THE FEAR OF HAVING A LIVE ENCOUNTER WITH “OTHERNESS” IN A STUDENT, A COLLEAGUE, A SUBJECT, OR THE VOICE OF THE INNER TEACHER.

FEAR IS FUNDAMENTAL TO THE HUMAN CONDITION AND TO THE ACADEMIC CULTURE.  WE WILL ALWAYS HAVE OUR FEARS—BUT WE NEED NOT BE OUR FEARS.

I.       What are some of your fears in the classroom? How have you dealt with them? What have you learned about yourself and about fear as a result?

It is normal to feel fears while delivering a class; in my case, one of my biggest fears is when the students ask me for knowing something new, and I do not have the answer for them. It is uncomfortable not to give a clear response to their doubts. When they are talking between them that I do not the answer, it is very hard trying to catch their attention again to continue the class. All the students are really different, and another fear that I have to face in the classroom is the fact of having to interact with many different moods, personalities, and learning styles of the students. Some of the students have a bad attitude towards the subject because they do not like it. For that reason, another fear to face is making the subject attractive for them to like it. When they do not like the subject, they do not participate in class, and so on. And we as teachers have to deal with those fears in the classroom.

For traying to deal with my fears, I make use of different learning activities in which I can know my students for having a better idea about their personalities in the classroom, their attitude towards the subject, and what their learning styles are, to improve my own teaching style when those fears appear from nowhere disrupting my class.

II.     Palmer writes, “Good teaching is an act of hospitality toward the young, and hospitality is always an act that benefits the host even more than the guest” (p. 50). In what specific ways do you think a teacher has to be hospitable to students? In what ways do they treat them as unwelcome guests? How do teachers benefit from practicing hospitality toward students?

According to Palmer, the teacher is a "host" who invites the students "the guests" to the classroom "his house" for for taking an English class "for having a party" in which they are going to learn "to have fun" while they acquire knowledge "while they enjoy the show".

Since the teacher enters the classroom, he has to make the students feel comfortable and welcome to his class, so  that their feelings at the moment of starting a class are taken into account for getting rapport as chemistry between them and the teacher. Another way for being hospitable to students is showing interest on their progress by motivating them when they have improved a lot. (p. 50)

When teachers do not know the students' names, the students feel as unwelcome guests in the classroom because the teacher does not know them. When a teacher takes a student as the point of attention  or the center of the class, the other students feel like they are not important for him, they think that the teacher has preferences.

Teachers benefit from practicing hospitality towards students because we as teachers have good rapport during all the class, we can see that students like our classes, we realize that the learning teaching process takes place in the classroom, we can see our students' progress towards the subject, and we realize that they like our party "English class".

III.    Write about a fear, not necessarily related to teaching that once controlled you, but no longer does.  What caused you to confront that fear? What helped you get loose from it? What were the results? What did you learn?

When I was a child, I can remember I could not ride a bike because I was afraid of falling to the ground and not to learn bycling. I fell down, and it was too embarrassed. I did not want to try it again, and I did not try it for one year. Then I realized that I wanted to learn bycling, but I had the fear of falling down. Once I began traying bycling, and the thing was that I fell down like ten time, but I did not care because I learned bycling, and now I can ride a bike wherever I want to go. Through this experience, I could learn that the wish of learning something new is bigger than the fear of trying it no matter if we fell down many times before because the results will be wonderful.

  Evelyn Fox Keller says of Nobel Prize—winner Barbara McClintock that her knowing came from “the highest form of love, love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference” (pp. 55).  Does this kind of love have a place in education? If not, why not? If so, how might it be taught? How might it make a difference if we could teach students to love the world in this way?

I consider that the highest form of love is the one that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference, as Evelyn Fox says. I agree with her because in my opinion, all of us are different, that is why we have to comprehend to each other. The reason is that our differences make us be unique that only being united, we can feel love for others. And we as teachers need to appreciate all our students' differences to make them feel unique so that they are capable to do whatever they want, and they can learn no matter if they feel something difficult.

Entry based on the book.

Based on the book "The courage to teach"

I.       Write a personal statement trying to express what is at the heart of your life as a future teacher.  Consider the following questions: Why do I want to become a teacher? What do I stand for as a student teacher?  What do I want my legacy as a teacher to be? What can I do to keep track of myself, to “remember” my own heart? When did you first realize that you wanted to be a teacher? What were the circumstances of this realization? How close are you to those feelings today?

"The power of knowing to teach is in the power of knowing to learn, my dream of becoming a teacher  is based on the wish of helping others to find out their own ways of learning, teachers are models to follow up and their legacy must be education, orientation, and values as a mark he or she left in students' lives. Also a teacher keeps in mind his or her objectives crearly". 

I remember when I realised that I wanted to become a teacher, a teacher was the person who inspired me to be like him. He was an English teacher, and he left a good legacy  in my life. That was why I decided to try it.

I feel that I am closer to those feelings of loving teaching, loving what I do, loving helping people, and loving creating new things.



II.      Palmer writes: “ My ability to connect with my students and to connect them with the subject, depends less on the methods I use than on the degree to which I know and trust my selfhood—and I am willing to make it available and vulnerable in the service of learning” (p.10). What does it mean to rely on your selfhood rather than methods?

In my opinion, there are some teachers who think  that methods make a class effective. The point is that a lot of teachers do not connect the students with the subject they are teaching because they do not know how to do it. They trust on the techniques than in their selfhood because they are afraid of what the students are going to say about them, and what they are going to think about their personality.  Those teachers do not feel free and comfortable during teaching classes, and they do not feel confident without using a method, they are really worried about it that they forget the students' needs, they are only thinking in the performance they are going to do in class that they do not remember taking into account the students' feelings, interests, and so on.

It is very important that, we as teachers learn to listen the feedback from our students about our performance in classes to improve our own teaching style, and go back to see what we did wrong to change it, and do it again differently.

In some cases, we imagine that when using a method, the class will be successful, but when we realize that it does not work, we feel as we are in the death zone. That is whay we do not have to trust on the methods we use than on the ability we have to connect our students.



III.    Reflect on your earliest encounters with teaching.  If you are drawn to teaching, when did you first feel drawn to it? What was it that drew you? What within you was evoked by teaching—its values, its methods, the way it names and frames reality? What does the nature of teaching reveal about who you are? If you aren’t, share a story about one of your favorite teachers.  What do you recall most vividly about that teacher? What was his / her relation to the subject taught? What was the ethos of his/ her classroom?

My earliest encoynters with teaching were when I was in ninth grade, an excellent English teacher inspired me to study for being an English teacher, and since that happened, I started to ask about teaching specially English because English was my favorite subject. What drew me about teaching was that I can transmit my knowledge, and say that because there are a lot of persons who do know many things and have several things in their minds, but they do not share their knowledge with nobody. Sometimes, I ask some things that I do not know, and it is really horrible when I know that a person has the answer to my doubt and he or she does not let me know it. That kind of person is selfish, that is why I wanted to learn and then to teach what I learnt for helping others to know new things, and encourage them to help others facilitating the knowledge they have. In fact, I liked teaching since I had a lot of doubts, and I wanted to know their answers. So,  I liked teaching since I wanted to learn, since I decided to build my own learning, and share it.

I believe that, the values and methods of teaching were avoked within me because we can apply methods in our classes sharing knowledge without neglecting the values such as respect, ethic, moral, etc., for teaching students how to live and deal with problems.

Also, what I remember more vividly from my English teacher is his attitude at the moment of developing his class, he never made us feel afraid, he used many techniques in classes, he involved all the students in the activities, he was always motivated, etc. He encouraged me to study this major because of his selfhood more than the methods he used. He was committed on the subject he taught because he was really focused on the students' needs, he adapted his lesson plans to our interests, he made us understand the same topic through different ways, and we learnt. 

The ethods of his classroom was his ability to connect us to the English subject using many activities related to our interests, and that ability worked with us. I could learn!



Jane Tompkins discovered that her goal as a teacher had been to put on “performance,” thus distancing herself from students and subject (pp.28-29).  Do you identify with her self-criticism? If so, do you share Tompkins’s diagnosis of fear as the driving force behind this distancing? In what ways other than “performance” do teachers set themselves apart?

I think that, we sometimes distance ourselves from students and subject, and we do not realize of that while we think in our goals and expectations about the role we have as teachers. It is necessary to consider our self-criticism to better in what we do without forgetting our students, the subject we teach, and our role as teachers. 


The point is to make use of fear as the driving force behind the distancing to not forget all the components of the teaching learning process who are the teacher, the students, and te classroom, and remember to make a balance among all the things which must be taken into account.