Showing posts with label philosophy of education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy of education. Show all posts

Sunday 20 January 2013

Five Hundred a Year

I need to write. How many times have I said this, over and over, to you, dear Reader, and to myself? But I will say it again: I need to write. Today, I need to write because I feel compelled to do so. Because I am able and because I am free to do so. Last night, I read Virginia Woolf’s correct and beautifully crafted essay “A Room of One’s Own”. I read it because it caught my eye at the library on Friday, while I was laying in supplies for a Reading Party. The only Virginia Woolf I’d read before was the brief “A Mark on the Wall” in a Brit Lit Survey class in college. I like her, thus far, though I’ve not yet given her fiction a chance. We shall see. . .

I want to tell you that “A Room of One’s Own” fits perfectly, perfectly, into our discussion of voice this year. Woolf boils the whole subject of women’s writing into 2 points: to write, one must have five hundred a year and a room of one’s own. Reading Woolf renewed my growing conviction of the great difference opportunity can make in the lives of separate persons.

 These words—king, beggar, wife, husband, rich, impoverished, educated, illiterate—merely describe opportunities given or denied, they do not speak of innate qualities or potentialities. I want to highlight this idea of opportunity because I feel that it is an essential component in finding one’s voice. To have a voice, sorry, I should say, to use one’s voice, one must have the opportunity to do so. 

Everyone has a voice, but not everyone receives the tools to develop it, to give it form and meaning in language's soft vowels and scraping consonants. Those who are seldom heard--the poor, the marginalized, the illiterate, and the oppressed--have lacked opportunity, but are not voiceless. As Americans, we wonder why children in Asia tend to be better at math. Is it because American children are by nature stupid and slovenly? Are they less intelligent, or just more inclined to the arts? No. It is because children in Asia are given the opportunities necessary for excellence in numbers. We ask why, in America, white children in wealthy families are more likely to be successful than the ethnic inhabitants of inner cities. It's because of opportunity. Wealthy children tend to receive the opportunity of a better education, and are therefore more likely to find, and use, their own voices.

Woolf notes how difficult it is for a woman to write while acknowledging that her predecessors—her mothers and grandmothers—spent their lives crying out in child bed and otherwise living as mute ornaments to their husbands’ glory. Woman, Woolf notes, lacks the strong, certain tapestry of letters that man has claimed as part of his rightful dominion over the world. She cannot look back on thousands of years, reciting genealogies of female poets and playwrights. She instead looks back on a liturgy of housekeepers, servants, slaves, and sexual objects—possessions prized or disdained. Woman writing must, in hearing her own voice, recognize the silence of her sisters throughout time and space.

Because I have not been forced into one kind of life, and because I am not even among those who fought for the opportunity to speak, I get to be the Woman writing. I am able to use my voice, and I know what it sounds like. 

I am blessed. This is simply another way of saying that I have been given the opportunity to use my voice. 

Let's summarize. We have seen that to use one's voice one must first be cleansed of iniquity, otherwise all that one speaks is filth in the eyes of God. And to use one's voice, one must have a private space, and five hundred a year.

Saturday 21 July 2012

Literacy, Numeracy, and The Knowledge of God

I'm getting ready to transition from my summer job at a tutoring center for students with learning disabilities to my 10-months-of-the year-job as a teacher's assistant at a school for kids with learning disabilities. Yea, verily, I am an educator.
Because of this, I thought it time to review my educational philosophy and goals for the next school year.

Here they are, in perhaps, no particular order:
Goals for 2012-2013
  • Teach explicitly by modeling and thinking aloud. Help students generate their own questions.
  • Put into practice the words of Mother Theresa's daily prayer. Pray this prayer daily. http://aproposadelaide.blogspot.com/2012/05/mother-teresas-daily-prayer-its.html
  • Continue to use effective strategies to meet the needs of all students while adding others to my "instructional toolbox".
  •  Teach according to the principles of distributive review and practice.
  • Learn more about the principles and practices of behavior management.
  • Learn more about the principles of assessment, familiarize myself with more assessments, learn how to read the scores.
  • Remember that literacy, and all types of learning, occurs on a continuum, and that every day each of my students is moving up and down this ladder.
  • Enjoy making small talk with parents.
  • Teach according to the principles learned in my college Philosophy of Ed. class:  
Anthropology
man and his telos
teaching and learning
Theology
revelation, transformation, and ascent
theological theology
Philosophy
truth and knowledge

I'm too tired to write out detailed information about each of these categories, but once I wrote a paper about it, which you can read if you truly want to know more.