I'm getting an unusual opportunity as a teacher. I get to make a relatively fresh start, in the middle of April, just two and a half months before the summer vacation.
Since I've just come back from a longer-than-usual maternity leave, all the teachers who I help with their planning (social studies teachers, Grades 2 through 6), have had a break from the dragon breathing over their shoulders. So I can take all the concerns I had been developing at the beginning of the year, and attack them as if the year were just beginning. The teachers, meanwhile, are already in the swing of teaching, so the hiccups that go with the year's beginning are out of the way.
I've asked them all to identify one thing they'd like to improve in their teaching. I intend to identify one thing I think they should work on, as well. Two goals should be plenty for now. The trick is picking an appropriate goal. Something that will fit into Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, something that the teacher herself thinks is valuable, and something that I think is valuable, too.
It's difficult for me to thrust in the "what I think is valuable" part. All my training in education and most of my reading on education is pretty critical of the idea of the expert. But here, in Lahore, Pakistan, the world of education is vastly different. For one, the culture is far more used to the idea of the expert. We almost worship hierarchy. For another, few teachers have any formal training in education. Similarly, few teachers read anything at all in the professional literature (although, from my experience of American public school teachers, they are not unique in this). So, having earned a degree in education, and being a compulsive reader, I find myself falling into the role of expert without any desire to do so.
I'll mention an idea, and no one will have heard about it. Terms that are being used quite frequently amongst teachers elsewhere (mostly the USA and UK, I suppose), are completely alien here. So even to begin a conversation that will lead to professional development requires taking on this mantle of expertise. I keep expecting that someone will turn around and say "Stop! You imposter! What right do you have to be wielding such authority."
More on the ramifications of that authority another time, particularly vis a vis how much the teachers I supervise trust me.
Since I've just come back from a longer-than-usual maternity leave, all the teachers who I help with their planning (social studies teachers, Grades 2 through 6), have had a break from the dragon breathing over their shoulders. So I can take all the concerns I had been developing at the beginning of the year, and attack them as if the year were just beginning. The teachers, meanwhile, are already in the swing of teaching, so the hiccups that go with the year's beginning are out of the way.
I've asked them all to identify one thing they'd like to improve in their teaching. I intend to identify one thing I think they should work on, as well. Two goals should be plenty for now. The trick is picking an appropriate goal. Something that will fit into Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, something that the teacher herself thinks is valuable, and something that I think is valuable, too.
It's difficult for me to thrust in the "what I think is valuable" part. All my training in education and most of my reading on education is pretty critical of the idea of the expert. But here, in Lahore, Pakistan, the world of education is vastly different. For one, the culture is far more used to the idea of the expert. We almost worship hierarchy. For another, few teachers have any formal training in education. Similarly, few teachers read anything at all in the professional literature (although, from my experience of American public school teachers, they are not unique in this). So, having earned a degree in education, and being a compulsive reader, I find myself falling into the role of expert without any desire to do so.
I'll mention an idea, and no one will have heard about it. Terms that are being used quite frequently amongst teachers elsewhere (mostly the USA and UK, I suppose), are completely alien here. So even to begin a conversation that will lead to professional development requires taking on this mantle of expertise. I keep expecting that someone will turn around and say "Stop! You imposter! What right do you have to be wielding such authority."
More on the ramifications of that authority another time, particularly vis a vis how much the teachers I supervise trust me.
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