So I have all these ideas that I'm trying to hold in my head simultaneously, but they're all linked with each other, so when I develop one of them, the others automatically shift position, and I'm left in completely uncharted territory, every nanosecond or so.
What's the big deal, you ask? Well, here goes.
My work as a teacher has different facets. I teach courses in two completely different subjects, and I coach debate teams. Plus I have to organize student participation in various extra curricular activities. So there's a fair bit of mental juggling to do on a day to day basis.
THEN there's the fact that I have the mixed blessing of being interested in just about everything under the sun, and the connections between all those things. So there's a desire to look at educational policy at the national level, changes in thinking about education in the world of academia, changes in the world of teachers, the role of private schools in 'public' education, particularly in the third world, the ways in which different people view the purpose of education and how that affects their concept of what it means to educate people.
Then there's my masters degree coursework. Of the lectures, the less said, the better. How is it possible to walk out of a three-hour-long lecture-based class with only one page of notes? And what do you do when the professor hasn't done the assigned reading? Anyway. In spite of these annoyances, the readings for the required courses give me whole new areas of knowledge that I'm interested in. Like research in the teaching of Urdu. I've never taught Urdu. But it looks like no one has done any real research on what works when you're trying to teach it, and how different or similar that might be from what works when you're trying to teach English. English, of course, is important in Pakistan because of our colonial heritage, but also because all students in public education are required to learn it at some point. There's a tremendous body of research on what works when you're teaching English... can it be transferred directly? I would suspect not, particularly in terms of learning to read and write. But that's just a guess....
Really, I suppose I should just pick a topic, and stick to it. But life is so much less interesting that way.
What's the big deal, you ask? Well, here goes.
My work as a teacher has different facets. I teach courses in two completely different subjects, and I coach debate teams. Plus I have to organize student participation in various extra curricular activities. So there's a fair bit of mental juggling to do on a day to day basis.
THEN there's the fact that I have the mixed blessing of being interested in just about everything under the sun, and the connections between all those things. So there's a desire to look at educational policy at the national level, changes in thinking about education in the world of academia, changes in the world of teachers, the role of private schools in 'public' education, particularly in the third world, the ways in which different people view the purpose of education and how that affects their concept of what it means to educate people.
Then there's my masters degree coursework. Of the lectures, the less said, the better. How is it possible to walk out of a three-hour-long lecture-based class with only one page of notes? And what do you do when the professor hasn't done the assigned reading? Anyway. In spite of these annoyances, the readings for the required courses give me whole new areas of knowledge that I'm interested in. Like research in the teaching of Urdu. I've never taught Urdu. But it looks like no one has done any real research on what works when you're trying to teach it, and how different or similar that might be from what works when you're trying to teach English. English, of course, is important in Pakistan because of our colonial heritage, but also because all students in public education are required to learn it at some point. There's a tremendous body of research on what works when you're teaching English... can it be transferred directly? I would suspect not, particularly in terms of learning to read and write. But that's just a guess....
Really, I suppose I should just pick a topic, and stick to it. But life is so much less interesting that way.
Comments