Yardsticks and Story Building

(Work)

First year teaching, second year teaching, third… Would anyone be surprised to know you learn as you go? Look at this blog. My expectations have formed, burned and reformed. My words follow the same paths; creative at times, serious in others and mostly just an image of a singularly standing moment. It is put together as circumstance unfolds, following its erratic temperament.

Currently, I’ve been reading a lot about how to be a better teacher. I see the limits of my personal experiences and reflections in the classrooms. Critique, developed studies, built vocabularies of techniques and debates on educational reform are present in a majority of my reading interests. I’ve come to a new place, hoping to learn something new. To be a good teacher, to reach my students on some level, to have taught and played are not enough. There is a refinement needed and it comes from measuring my self not against my self but against potential. Materials and others’ experiences are the key.

I’ve built entire classes on the fly and thoroughly planned classes, noting the limits of each. The walls have burned in the heat of disruption and rested cool under the calm of students working in my classroom. There have been so many lessons learned but I want more than just the empirical.

I’m wading through Teach Like a Champion (Doug Lemov) and 36 Children (Herbert Kohl) in order to scratch out the layers, breaking down the words to find a way to put that yardstick against my own height. This is a process that is taking me deeper than I first anticipated when I started in the Peace Corps.

This is not one standing moment, even if these words are full of my current drive. It is a sense that this is somewhere that I need more and can expand more. Grad school, teaching and beyond. This blog is just a noting of this step in that process.

For anyone reading, I’m interested in any helpful materials on teaching and education or recommendations.

(IT lab)

All the schools closed for an unexpected vacation just as I got my top students into chairs in front of computers. Eight somewhat-working machines worked with eight heads at a time for a brief moment before the lock was put on the door due to student protests in the country. Now it looks like that lock will be reopened in the near future.

The idea at the moment is to combine Word and Paint to produce pictures with text that come out as stories. The classes will be mostly open discussions on computer uses, characterization, plot, scenery, mouse-usage and anything that suddenly pops into the conversation. It’s an experiment in what happens when you take motivated students, put them in front of contraptions that wonder and intimidate them, then allow them to work in that environment towards the goal of building a story.

Like most things in Burkina, we will see how it goes. After all, and as this blog attests, much is said of the best laid plans of mice and men. Burkina has a way of taking a normal semester and turning it on its head. Nothing happens according to plan.