Recently, my thoughts have turned to what is the real future of education, and what suppositions of mine are leading me to teach and regard teaching in the way I do. The assumption of those in charge of our nation’s system of education is that the way it has always been is the only way it can continue, and since it can’t be changed, it must be the people it proposes to educate that need changing. And since that was the view of society at large, the view of my family, many of them teachers, I was conditioned for it to be mine as well. How was I able to be so convinced, without so much as questioning the underlying assumptions? How did it seem natural to me to sit at a desk, one of 20 or so children my age, doing seat work and projects, memorizing facts and synthesizing information so as to supposedly come to my own, new conclusions? It was never questioned in teacher training, or in my own classroom, even as students in my first years of teaching defied me, acquiesced to me, were engaged by me, fell asleep in front of me. My quest began to find and implement different teaching philosophies, using student-led discussions, with very little direct instruction (where I was cautioned that I might get fired if I didn’t stick to the curriculum); reading up on Montessori techniques, looking into Waldorf training. I would get into personalized and heated discussions with colleagues, administrators. I would watch the news and rail against political candidates who favored school choice voucher systems and forced on us No Child Left Behind. I got behind the small-schools initiative. I tried to bring spirituality into my teaching. In the end, however, changing the minds of my school staff let alone the district or the entire nations system of educators was impossible. I got depressed. Then, the search for answers led me to a different direction.
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