Teach Me Something Real

By Dori Seider

What can we do to keep not only our teaching but also our lives more deeply meaningful, vibrant, restorative and exciting? This book gives to both new and experienced teachers and learners alike a gift of power and permission to be every ounce of what you want to be with vigor and determination, courage, respect and passion as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 27, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462842766

Dori Seider

Dori Seider has been an author, teacher, music composer and jewelry design artist. She and her husband Mac enjoy cooking and baking and their two beloved cats. This book is part of a series including Jazzy and Rhumbi In Paris and Jazzy and Rhumbi Become Chefs.

Book preview

Copyright © 2008 by Dori Seider.

Cover Photography by Elliot Madriss

Copyright © 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

28633

Contents

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

PART II

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

PART III

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

PART IV

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

PART V

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

REFERENCES

TO ALL OF YOU WHO ARE READING THIS BOOK NOW:

MAY IT BRING YOU RENEWED PURPOSE AND SHEER DELIGHT

PREFACE

HOW DID THE planets get here? asks an eight-year-old. As you explain the latest theory, you will see something in the eyes of this lively, hopeful, inquisitive child aside from her interest in science. You’ll notice a curiosity about the meaning of life itself, which in turn is related to the question she is asking and is more direct.

Her eyes seem to ask you things like, How can I feel good about myself? And, because of our turbulent world, they may also ask, How can I be happy when a train can blow up tomorrow—or a building?

Teacher, can you explain life to me and while you’re at it, can you show me how to make mine better? seems to be the question your students are asking underneath or alongside of everything you teach them, independent of your subject area.

For 35 years I have taught several subjects on different levels of education, but when I look back over all of that time, I can see clearly that some of the best teaching I’ve ever done developed from my students’ desire to make their lives better.

We realized together that teaching and learning reach into the core of life itself. Today, this core of life contains new forms of violence and more intense reactions of fear. We also have to deal at times with no rewards, little enhancement, implausible tasks, unlivable boredom, economic recessions, loss and emptiness. The obstacles that teachers and learners face every day are exactly the challenges of life, itself, in and out of school.

These challenges remind me of a film for children (and for some of us older children!) called THE NEVERENDING STORY. In it, a cloudy substance called The Nothing was threatening to take over the world. The Nothing was a symbol of hopelessness, and the hero in the film—a child—saved the other children from its grim prophecy.

Here is where you come in if you are starting a new career as a teacher, or if you are already an experienced teacher who wants to feel reenergized as your students flourish. Know from the very first day on—if you are a brand new teacher—and know from now on if you have been teaching for awhile—that the impact you have goes way beyond the specific subject that you teach. As a matter of fact, your impact also goes beyond the immediate situation you are in at the moment, and can change a student’s life.

Whenever you teach, something much more powerful than what can be seen on the surface is taking place. You, as a teacher, are a hero who helps to transform the negative energy of The Nothing. Not only do you have the power to help your students transform negative energy into positive experience, but you also have the power to help them transcend the mundane, the toxic and the horrific, as you teach your students to think in new ways.

Ask yourself what you can do, in this troubled world of ours, to keep your teaching not only deeply meaningful, but also vibrant, restorative and exciting. When I was first starting out as a teacher, the book that answered this question for me and that taught me how to think in new ways was George Leonard’s EDUCATION AND ECSTASY (1968).

He explained how learning is ecstatic by nature, no matter how awful the surrounding events of life. He spoke of war, poverty, hatred and intolerance, but always demonstrated how the ecstasy of learning could transform and transcend whatever pain we had to face. Education could reunite us, heal wounds, open us to inner peace and happiness greater than what we had ever imagined.

In other words, George Leonard felt, and so do I, that each of us, teacher and student, can rebuild and reshape our existence. We have a right to our own unique fulfillment and to whatever teaching, nurturing or coaching it may take to get us there. Most of all, each of us has an enduring right to human happiness, in which the ecstasy of learning is a continual, self-renewing component.

For 35 years, both as a teacher and as a perennial student, who has taken courses in subjects as diverse as painting, aviation, professional baking, computer science, French, psychology, music and T’ai Chi, I can attest to the fact that George Leonard was right. No matter how difficult it is to be a teacher, and no matter how difficult it is to be a student, education is ultimately ecstatic by nature.

I must have transmitted my passion for both teaching and learning to my students, who pleaded with me to write a book that teaches how to teach. Dr. Seider, they said (too many times to count), I love your teaching methods. Please teach others how to teach. I graciously accepted their heartfelt expressions of joy in their learning, and very quickly dismissed the idea of writing a book which teaches others how to teach. Why? Because I thought that what was an innocent idea on their part would be presumptuous on my part.

Everyone teaches differently, I thought, so who am I to suggest how others should perform their work? Surely, I should be respectful and show some humility by leaving well enough alone. But my students kept at it. Just as my former student (now a teacher) Rick Maisto had told me years ago, Go and study for your doctorate, and would not stop until I did, my current students were serious about me teaching how to teach. They wanted my ability to reach them in important ways to be shared.

I had to take my students seriously—how could I discount them now, when I had spent a lifetime making them my top priority? They convinced me that I had a responsibility to impart the most valuable insights gained as a result of my many years of teaching.

So, I put my 35 years under a microscope. I carefully studied exactly and meticulously what kind of teaching gave my students something they could sink their teeth into—and at the same time, gave them enduring joy. When I think back over the 35 years, my students had been saying to me silently, or out loud, "Teach me something real"(deep, substantive and enduring) and "teach it in a way that will really reach me."

So I write this book for you—new teachers and experienced ones—to give you something real from my intellect, my years of experience, and from my heart. I pass along the gift which George Leonard’s wonderful book gave to me—a gift of power and permission to be every ounce of what you want to be as a teacher, with vigor and determination, courage, respect and with passion as well.

Everything we do and everything we are, teaches. At different times, we are each in turn a student, a parent, a member of a community in which we are continually learning and also showing the way to others.

So I also write this book for you—parents, perennial students, members of our communities and of our complex, but very interconnected world. My wish for you is that in reading it you may feel reaffirmed, renewed and revitalized.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ANYONE WHO HAS helped with this manuscript and has been inadvertently left out of these acknowledgements will be treated to dinner and offered nourishment as well as gratitude.

I would like to thank the following people who supported this writing: Cheryl Adler, Zaven Arzoumanian, Ani Arzoumanian, Nicole Badawi, Tiara Badawi, Joanna Baymiller, Paula Beiger, Jack Beiger, Jamie Benjamin, Bob Berkowitz, Elaine Billy, Rusty Bourgault, Lilian Jackson Braun, Roy Bundy, Winnie Burgess, Emily Carone, Loretta Chianese, Julie A. Chiorello, Ariana Collins, Cindi Seider Collins, Branson Collins, Michael Collins, Kathy Conaway, Cynthia Christensen, Villa de Guzman, Marilyn Dietrich, Sharon Digennaro, Carrie Everett, Andrée Falco, Mindel Feuerstein, David Feuerstein, Lee Feuerstein, Joan Goldstein, Khalida Haqq, Alvyn Haywood, Susan Hecht, Carol Helton, Helene Hemmans, Adolf Hemmans, Joanna Hitchcock, Sophia Hsu, Joy Irven, Marie Jantos, Sally Jones, Ronnie Kadosh, Harry Kenworthy, Lisa Kmiec, Basha Krasnoff, Kyounghee Lee, Diane Loving, Susan Lustik, Cara MacAdam, Carol MacAdam, Sian MacAdam, Marga Matheny, Joe Minotti, Kay Mograbi, Mary Morse, Rosemary Morton, Brian

Mulvan, Donna Munde, Becky Oliver, Maria Otter, Diana Pabers, Dot Phillips, Daniel Phillips, Douglas Phillips, Kaetra Pletenyik, Rachel Potasznik, Bobby Pugh, Rae Reynolds, Beverly Richardson, Lynn Robbins, Esther Rothchild, Michele Rousseau, Judith Sachs, Marie Sayler, Pat Schiller, Art Schwartz, Bruce Scofield, Joanne Scofield, Michael Scofield, Kathleen Collins Seibert, Roy B. Seider, Helen Seitz, Carol Selick, the late