Far Reaches of Instruction

By Donald Wilcox Thomas

In schools of antiquity, according to Alfred North Whitehead, philosophers aspired to impart wisdom. In modern colleges, our humbler aim is to teach subjects. The drop from divine wisdom, which was the goal of the ancients, to textbook knowledge of subjects, which is achieved by the moderns, marks an educational failure, sustained through the ages. He defines wisdom as the way in which knowledge is held.

The ways in which we hold our knowledge is the subject of these essays. It is a subject too little pursued in the corridors of education where the concern today resides with the data rather than the import of the knowledge we pursue. The goal of every teacher, regardless of the level taught, is to think about the knowledge they teach and how it informs and expands the ways in which we live. Without this kind of oversight, we fall into the mere mechanics of instruction, failing to press it beyond the bounds of ordinary thought.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524547912

Donald Wilcox Thomas

A graduate of Princeton and Harvard, Donald Thomas is a veteran teacher, principal, and professor. He has taught in a junior high school, an elite prep school, a comprehensive high school in Nigeria, a university academy, a graduate school, and an inner city charter school. But the bulk of his career was devotd to twenty five year in a suburban high school as a teacher of English, of semiotics, and as a department chairman. His signal achievement has been to found and direct a hih school in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where he continues to visit and consult.

Book preview

Far Reaches of Instruction

Notes on Teaching and Learning

Donald Wilcox Thomas

Copyright © 2016 by Donald Wilcox Thomas.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016916433

ISBN:      Hardcover          978-1-5245-4793-6

                Softcover            978-1-5245-4792-9

                eBook                 978-1-5245-4791-2

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/06/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

744844

Contents

PREFACE

A SENSE OF TIMING

AN AMERICAN ACADEMY

ELECTIVES

EX LIBRIS

FAR REACHES OF INSTRUCTION

FIVE PILLARS OF INSTRUCTION

GREAT IDEAS: LESS ABOUT MORE

HANDS-ON

HIGH SCHOOL IN THE BUSH

INCENTIVE

LEARNING TO WRITE

LESSONS ONLINE!

LIBRARY UNIVERSITY

LITERARY LAGGARDS

MY GRAMMAR

PARADE OF SIGNS

PATTERNS OF INSTRUCTION

READING ALOUD

SCHOOLS OF TOMORROW

TEACHERS VERSUS TEACHING

TEACHERS’ WORKSPACE

TERGIVERSATION

THE AGENCY FEE

THE BLACK BOX

THE CODGER FACTOR

THE MIRROR LESSON

THE PROMISE

TRACKING

WRITING AS PRODUCT AND PROCESS

UNCONSCIOUS JOURNEY

THE XYZs OF LEARNING

JOURNEYS

GEORGIAN TRILOGY

NO CALL FROM ARGENTIA

RIDING THE RAILS

WEEVILS

Also by Donald Wilcox Thomas

Rummaging in the Fields of Light: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Pushing the Pencil: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Schoolmastery: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Esse Quam Videri (a coming-of-age novel)

Semiotics 4: Language in the Making

Semiotics 3: Communication, Codes, and Culture

Semiotics 2: Communication in Man and Beast

Semiotics 1: Language, Thought, and Reality

Dedication

To all those brave enough

and good enough to undertake a life of teaching.

Great teaching lives in the taught but dies with the teacher.

PREFACE

In schools of antiquity, according to Alfred North Whitehead, philosophers aspired to impart wisdom; in modern colleges our humbler aim is to teach subjects. The drop from divine wisdom, which was the goal of the ancients, to text-book knowledge of subjects, which is achieved by the moderns, marks an educational failure, sustained through the ages.¹ He elsewhere defines wisdom as the way in which knowledge is held.

The ways in which we hold our knowledge are the subject of these essays. It is a subject too little pursued in the corridors of education, where concern today resides with the data rather than the import of the knowledge we pursue. I take it to be the goal of every teacher, regardless of the level taught, to think about the knowledge he or she teaches and how it informs and expands the ways in which we live. Without this kind of oversight, we fall into the mere mechanics of instruction, failing to press it beyond the bounds of ordinary thought.

A SENSE OF TIMING

Perhaps more than anything, teaching demands a sense of timing, an intuitive grasp of when to press and when to let go. It is a sense that goes against everything we are told when we are learning how to teach. Teacher education is all about plans and uniform behavior. First, you decide on your objective—what students should know and be able to do by the end of your lesson. And then you lay out the plan for arriving at your chosen objective, detailing every step along the path leading your students toward their designated enlightenment. And you will have in mind how to assure that they have indeed acquired the specified knowledge and attendant behavior in reaching your stated goal.

The trouble is, as we instantly discover upon standing before our anticipated charges, things never go precisely according to plan, nor is classroom behavior ever uniform. Like us, students are indelibly human and individual. In no time at all, watching us hour upon hour, they know everything about us—our wardrobes and accoutrements, our shoes and glasses, our giggles and glares, our gaffs and favors. We have to be adept in dealing with the unexpected and unwarranted, with the things our education professors never told us. We have to learn how to listen, not only to every individual before us, but also to ourselves. And then we have to fabricate a whole collection of moves, usually on the spot.

Above all, what we need to know is every student, which means we have to watch them carefully over time to gauge their different moods, taking note of their companions and their competitors. We need to know their habits and their interests. And this includes what happens not just in class but also before and after class—in the corridors and the cafeteria. It helps if we can know their parents and sense the nature of their family relationships. And we need to know all this because ultimately, more than just subjects, we teach persons. It is the person that is the pathway to our subject, not the reverse.

Even then, taking all this into consideration, timing is our most critical element. As we learn from Ecclesiastes, To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. Teaching, as the ordinary presumption misconstrues, requires not so much patience as a sense of timing. We are patiently awaiting not the correct answer but rather when to strike and when to let go. We must be gifted in taking notice, of noticing the little things that matter: the yawn and the smirk, the smile and the frown, the giggle and the glare. We note when they are early and when they are late, what they are wearing and what they are reading, with whom they converse and how they are equipped, when they are sick and when they are well.

Take the student who never talks in class, usually completes all assignments, but never volunteers. Instead of failing her for lack of participation (it’s usually a her), we draw her aside after class and say that we have been waiting in vain to hear from her. We ask her why she never speaks. And when she insists, as she is most likely to do, that she has nothing to say, we allow that this can’t be true because we see her talking in the corridors. Our message is that we are cognizant and waiting, and thereafter, every day in class, we gaze expectantly, eyebrows raised. Failing this, we insist that she say one thing in every class, even if it is only that she agrees with what has just been said. And when she finally relents with something substantive, then, passing her in the hall, we repeat her observation. That outside of class, we remember what she has said surprises her and perhaps becomes our signature thereafter. The point is that we have taken the time and acknowledged the person at the critical time.

Then there is the smart aleck (usually a he) who is energetic and disruptive, possibly discourteous. We watch him, silent, gazing, no escalation, just waiting. He knows he has our attention. He waits to be yelled at, to pull us off our stride. We just nod and continue. As further instances accumulate, we eventually pull him aside after class, avoiding the mistake of degrading him before his peers. We enumerate his multiple misbehaviors. Presuming that all students know exactly how to behave (which is true), as I always affirm at the beginning of each year, and therefore that any misbehavior must be considered deliberate (which may not by true), we must conclude that he has been purposely mischievous. We do not raise our voice, do not threaten with the panoply of possible punishments. We make clear that we are interested in him and hope that he will raise his expectations. Perhaps we will ask him to perform certain ancillary tasks—passing papers, collecting tests, retrieving equipment. All the while, we are looking for the good in him buried beneath the layers of surface behavior.

Thing is, however prescient the timing, howsoever devoted the attention, there is no category of student for whom we may hope to harbor some ready response. And that is the foundation of their appeal. It is why no curriculum, no lesson plan can cover our response. It is why all the clarion calls for foolproof teacher education have echoed down the decades to no avail. I once had a student who, decades later, told me that what he most revered was how I had once paused to consider my answer to one of his questions. It was the only time he claimed to have witnessed a teacher actually thinking. Decades! And this is what he remembers. Whether he now suspects how much thinking goes into all teaching, and not just mine, I did not seek to learn. But I am glad that he has managed to retain his admiration for thought.

What most students long for is to be known for themselves. Knowledge never comes bereft of the person knowing and consequently can never exist as some abstract standard. Our sense of timing is designed to disinter that self so that it may be set free to fix knowledge with its own personal stamp.

AN AMERICAN ACADEMY

It all started one wintry afternoon when a distinguished older man walked into the dean’s office introducing himself as Guivy Zaldastani, a resident and evidently prosperous local businessman in Boston. He said he was interested in starting a sister school to our academy, a projected high school in Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. A longtime American citizen, Mr. Zaldastani himself had been born in Georgia. Our university had previously granted an honorary doctorate to Eduard Shevardnadze, president of the newly independent state of Georgia, which may have prompted the idea of a possible continued relationship. Although our own academy was not slated to open until the following September, inaugural plans had been underway for a year. Consequently, as the newly minted dean, I was slated to accompany Mr. Zaldastani to Tbilisi for a week of consultation with the educators and government officials regarding the feasibility of his proposed project. The understanding, implied rather than stated, was that our university would play an active role in setting up this new school.

And so in January of 1993, Mr. Zaldastani and I boarded a plane bound for Frankfurt, Germany. In those days, one could fly from there to Tbilisi only aboard Russian Tupolev planes that do not return until a week later. I have elsewhere talked about the specifics of our visit (see page 113). Suffice it to say that in those days, Georgia had just emerged from a civil war in which a good portion of Tbilisi had been destroyed. Having gained its independence, it nevertheless suffered a catastrophic loss of its economic potential once the Russians had moved out, taking everything with them. There was no heat or electricity, and the only petrol available was obtained through the black market. Our consultations were nevertheless cordial and successful, meeting with President Shevardnadze on our final day. Our academy would be built behind their school no. 1, which itself had been destroyed. Upon my return, however, having submitted a detailed report of our Georgian meetings, I discovered that the university had never seriously entertained supporting this venture. For this and other reasons, I subsequently resigned my position as inaugural dean and spent the following year sailing our boat to the Bahamas and back with my family.

A few years later, while teaching at an inner-city charter school in Boston, I got a call from Mr. Zaldastani saying that he was still trying to start his school and asking if I would be interested in helping out. The critical problem was still in finding the requisite funds to support such a venture. His notion was that with Georgia becoming the lone democracy in the Caucasus, perhaps the US State Department would be willing to contribute to improving education there. And so we flew to Washington to meet with some designated education officials in the State Department. Our interest, we said, was in starting an American academy in Tbilisi. They shook their heads and said, We don’t do schools. Stunned by this dismissive answer, we nevertheless asked, Then what do you do? They said that they had a series of projects in which they offered teacher training to foreigners. Sensing this to be our entry mark, we asked about the specifics of this program, including applying for it. It would ultimately end up funding the training of all our projected teachers to the tune of over two million dollars. But in the meantime, it demanded a full and detailed project proposal that would take us a year to flesh out and submit.

Designing a school from the ground up is an exciting but daunting task. To begin with, my experience in Africa had taught me the importance of not attempting to import and subsequently impose American ideas on foreign soil. Georgia, after all, had a long and distinguished history in education that had, nonetheless, been dominated by Russian occupation for the past seventy years. The critical element of our new academy would reside in its teachers, all of whom would be native Georgians. At an individual cost of fifty thousand dollars, we would provide them with a full year’s exposure to American education in which their primary task would be to take the best of what they learned and apply it to the curricula that they themselves would be responsible for creating, one year at a time. And so in the first year, we would bring our first four teachers over to obtain master’s degrees in education from one of two designated institutions: Simmons College and Harvard Graduate School of Education, to each of which they would apply and to one of which they would have to be accepted. Each of these institutions would be asked to contribute to the project in the form of substantial discounts in tuition. Once the first echelon of staff had completed their year abroad and initiated the first year of operation with the inaugurating class, the second tier of teachers would be abroad attending their respective institutions. And so the school and the staff were built simultaneously one year at a time.

The academy is a private school, charging tuition, and headed by a board of trustees. All students entering the ninth grade in the academy would be trilingual: literate in their native Georgian,