If you remember what you learned in college, you know that you seldom focused upon real-world education.
That is because college and university education course work has little to do with the on-the-job learning that teachers need to be successful.
Higher Education Academic Disconnect
The problem with higher education is that classes there are academic in nature. This means that these classes are based upon theories, statistics, experimental research and other cognitive paradigms.
And, because these academic institutions want to be perceived as scientific, the observable, measurable, countable, replicable world of the scientific method holds sway.
Sidebar
Not that there is anything wrong with the scientific method, but the scientific method doesn't "cut it" in day to day classroom teacher performance.
For example: What does a teacher care if improvements in observable classroom behavior are statistically significant if the model reduces the average number of verbal outbursts from 250 per hour to 125 per hour? This is statistically significant, but who wants to consider results like this to be success, even in a self-contained classroom for the Emotionally Disturbed?
Besides that, what teacher is going to have the time to collect, input, analyze and evaluate experimental, scientific data.
Probably the only teacher willing to do so much work (with experimental data) for so little payback is a teacher who is working on their Ph.D. degree so that they can get a promotion and get out of the classroom.
Unrealistic Higher Education Timelines
Students in a college education methods class usually must develop and present a project each semester. That is, one project after six or eight weeks of the 13 week (or so) semester. (Sometimes the semester covers a longer calendar period if there is an intervening holiday such as Spring Break.)
But, what does a teacher really have to do in, say, a science class?
The answer of course is that the teacher must present a science lesson today, and then present another science lesson tomorrow…and the next day, and the next.
The comforts and luxuries of 1.) six weeks of research and 2.) multiple weekends to build the presentation, 3.) with the advantage of working with a partner…for only one lesson during that higher education semester…vaporize in face of real-world teaching requirements.
Perhaps a realistic college or university educational methods class strategy would be to require students to have a lesson ready every class period, and to have students chosen at random to present their lesson for the day to the class.
This would give education majors practice in building 24 to 36 lessons during the semester, far short of the 75 or so lessons that an elementary teacher must produce in a semester, but on the right track. This minimal number of assignments is far short of the 225 lessons that a high school science teacher (teaching three grade levels) might be required to produce during one school year.
On second thought, perhaps secondary methods class should require that students bring three completed lessons to every college methods class meeting7he
four lessons for a class that meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Distracting Theory
"Theory is as theory does" makes absolutely no sense.
And neither does attempting to find a "one-size-fits-all" theory of education.
The problem with studying the theories of "giants" in the education field is that most of these theories are based upon the writings of people that were not in the classroom.
How do we know that these academic book authors were not master teachers working in the classroom?
Easy. They had time to write the book and all those professional journal articles. Real teachers are engrossed with the needs of their classroom. And real teachers struggle with limited resouces because of the lack of school district funding. Real teachers have families and real teachers bring their school work home with them. Master teachers and seldom squeeze out the time from their busy schedules to write books and magazine articles.
Sidebar
The exception to this rule is the anthology of articles that a college or university professor publishes.
These compilations are often the work of those same "one-report-and-presention-per-semester" graduate students who were conducting the professor's research, unaware of their future contribution to the professo's tenure and book contract.
Besides, master teachers interact with their students as individuals in real time, face to face, person-to-person. This professional interaction proves to master teachers that every student is unique, and that theories seldom conform to the real-live world of students except in some vague and ill-defined way.
So, master teachers dump theories and focus upon person-to-person interaction with students, "Students are as you find them, not as a theorist posits students to be."
Besides, theories filter information and understanding, real communication opens channels of perception.
The Creative Imagination Problem
Higher education academic research also struggles with the reality of Creative Imagination.
Sidebar
Creative Imagination is the process whereby intentions, images and desires are imagined as having already happened. The Creative Imagination exercise is conducted before the fact, but the master teacher focuses upon the desired outcomes as though these have already occurred.
The academic problem with Creative Imagination, or the Law of Attraction, or Psycho-Cybernetics is that academician relegate the process to the status of Urban Legends for the Uninformed.
The higher education prejudice against these personal internal processes that engage and energize hidden (unconscious) areas of the human psyche occur because these mental and psychological processes are not observable (and therefore unscientific). Higher education academicians also avoid the Creative Imagination process because the process seem to connect with spiritual personal dimensions within teachers.
Separation of Church and State in Religion: "Smack Down" for Teacher Spirituality
School districts and the higher education professors that train the cohorts of new teachers are conversant with the Supreme Court rulings concerning the separation of church and state.
Because of this, the capacity for teachers and students to interact and communicate on spiritual levels is down played and covered up.
Of course, ignoring the problem of irate atheist parent lawsuits (a deplorable thing), and the problem of proselytizing students (a very bad thing); creates a need for teachers to take their spirituality and their spiritual practices underground.
Of course parents are sensitive to pressures for change upon the religion of their children. And of course, master teachers avoid influencing students to change their religion.
But, teachers may still…
- Feel compassion and reverence
- Exhibit charity
- Live a life of moral and ethical values
- Pray for students and pray for themselves
- Picture and feel the best for each of their students in the creative recesses of their mind
- Center their thoughts and emotions upon a "higher power"
- Think positive and loving thoughts about their students and assume that students will respond in a positive manner (on some level) to these thoughts
The Wide-Open Human Psyche
The theories that teachers learn in college and university education methods classes are both right and wrong.
The theories are right because people, situations, events, and processes can be found that seem to support the theory; and because there might be some predictive validity extrapolations for "what if," and "what's next" speculations.
The theories are wrong because people, situations, events, and processes can be found that seem to counterdict the theory.
This means that the theories are "part-time-right" and "more-times-wrong-than-not-wrong."
But, the bigger picture and plenty of emperical evidence suggests that the human psyche is much more plastic, pliable, resourceful, resilient and amazing than we currently theorize.
Your abilities and your students' abilities are stunning, spectacular, magnificent, creative, expansive and self-limited.
You could do more, be more, learn more, accomplish more than you realize if you didn't believe that you can't.
This is true for your students, too.
So, unlearn the theories that you learned in your higher education methods class, and let yourself and your students soar to new heights, new vistas, new dimensions.
Free yourself from the self-imposed barriers of thought, belief and action that are hemmed in and shackled by theories and indoctrination.
Open your mind and your experience to the possibility that your (and your students') abilities are just beginning to blossom.
Think of the smartest, most loving and compassionate, most talented, most successful people that ever lived as only buds" compared to the capacity that you have to flower.
You are more than an Ego, Id an Super Ego. You are more than a a theory.
Keep the theories for the faculty meetings where you have to defend your successes and allow here-and-now, real-life perception and one-to-one communication with your students to hold sway.
Your creative and intuitive potential exceeds your ability to operatonalize a theory and implement it as an instructional method. Your imagination and your personality are as important to your teaching ability as your ability to answer multiple choice questions and write college-level essays.
In your classroom, stick with what improves students' academic performance, and don't mind what the theorists say that you should believe.
Trust yourself and your abilities, and never mind what limits the theorists say you have.
