"...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet
I feel inspired this week. Ideas, discussion, theory . . motivation, creativity, flow experiences, reread Csikszentmihalyi, thought about John Dewey, wrote a lot at Giverny, asked myself questions. I am not thinking about specific, concrete ways to incorporate what I am learning in my classroom. I am dissatisfied with the content I am teaching. Yes, I am learning a great deal and can think of a multitude of ways to use WolframAlpha, Voicethread, active pedagogy strategies, etc. in my class. However, what I could do all day is discuss theory. That is what ignites me. What does this mean? I'm not sure yet.
The quote with which you began this post really resonated with me. I am not very patient with the questions, sometimes, and this reminded me that even my own learning is very developmental and that there are some answers I’m just not yet ready to understand, much less live.
ReplyDeleteYour comments about feeling dissatisfied with the content you are teaching and your passion for discussing theory suggest to me that you are rethinking things at a very deep level. The value of theory is that it gives us new options for thought and action by changing what it is we can see. You seem to have a tacit understanding that if you can re-envision the content of your curriculum and your purposes in engaging students with it, you can literally transform the experiences students have in your classes and the future trajectories of their lives.
For me, theory and practice began to converge when I made the decision to use a thematic, interdisciplinary approach to planning (as opposed to progressing through the textbook in a linear fashion). I began paying more attention to context; looking for ways to ground each lesson in content rather than in grammar; experimenting with emerging technologies, children’s literature, projects, and service learning; and tapping students’ interests and talents more purposefully. All of these actions were expressions of my understanding of various theories about motivation, creativity, experiential learning, etc. Class became something that I couldn’t wait to prepare and a place many of my students hated to leave when the bell rang. We tackled big questions and complex topics in simple language—art as social commentary, decision-making, personal legacies, philosophy, prejudice, school policy, social problems, etc.
My questions for you are how is discussing theory different from the other kinds of activities in which you typically engage, and what is it about theory that ignites you?
P.S. If you enjoyed the chapter you were assigned from Csikszentmihalyi, you might also want to read Ch. 4 from the same book.