Dr Meadows gave a link to Alfie Kohn's blog. A rebel at heart, Kohn gave a sarcastic list of how to create non-readers, and followed up with some positive principles for teaching. His next to last paragraph has summerized the battle which has begun in myself:
"The best teachers, I find, spend at least some of their evenings smacking themselves on the forehead – figuratively, at least – as they reflect on something that happened during the day. “Why did I decide that, when I could have asked the kids?” And, thinking about some feature of the course yet to come: “Is this a choice I should be making for the students rather than with them?” One Washington, D.C. creative writing teacher was pleased with himself for announcing to students that it was up to them to decide how to create a literary magazine – until he realized later that he had incrementally reasserted control. “I had taken a potentially empowering project and turned it into a showcase of what [I] could do.”[15] It takes insight and guts to catch oneself at what amounts to an exercise in pseudodemocracy. Keeping hold of power -- overtly for traditionalists, perhaps more subtly for those of us who think of ourselves as enlightened progressives – is a hell of a lot easier than giving it away."
I have found myself wanting to control and "inform" for the "good" of the person I'm interacting with. That is so counter productive to what I REALLY want to do as a teacher. This sin against teaching must be killed! I must allow others to struggle and learn just as I am now struggling to learn. I want to be a good teacher.
