Lecture # 1: Power and Learning

Lecture # 1: Power and Learning

A poem on education by Robin Enns

Who has it; who doesn't.
What who has it does with it.
What who doesn't have it does and doesn't do as a result.
This is about what to do with classroom power and why.

I have it.

In my classroom I am both in authority and an authority.
I decide what I will teach.
I decide what students will learn.
I decide how they will learn.
I decide what they know.
I decide where they can go next.
I have power over their student lives.
I have power over their professional futures.

My students don't have it.

They know they don't have it.
They are dependent.
They are vulnerable.
They are scared.

You know them.

They learn the Safe Way.
They assume the position.
They wait passively to be patted down.
They wait for the handcuffs.
They try to work out my peccadilloes.
Then they suck up.

They are supposed to ignore what they know.
They are supposed to ask no dumb questions.
They are supposed to fight their subjectivity.

If not

They get the dreaded D, the fateful F.

Good.

That's the way I like it.
They better do what I want.
They better do it the way I want it.
They better do it when I want it.
They better know what I think is important.
They better give my own expert words back to me.
They better get it right the first time.

Second chances are for losers.
They can't get a B if they do it any other way.
They go outside my rules, and I stomp 'em.
That's the way it is in the real world.
Get with the program.

They sit quiet.

I structure with overheads.
I don't use handouts.
If I did, they wouldn't come to class.
They'd just photocopy them.

I give them theory, theory, theory.
If they can't apply the theories, they won't get anywhere.
To keep them honest, I give snap quizzes, tests.
They have to know this stuff.
I mark them hard.
I don't want people who look at my grade sheets to think I'm easy.
I have high standards.

Students have to feel pain to learn.
They'll value what they learn all the more.
When they get a B from me, they know it means something.
I never give A's.

I couldn't do any of this without classroom power.

Without it, the discipline of learning is lost.
When they go to other professors, my students look undisciplined.
I look bad.

Student fear is crucial to student learning.
That's the Hard Way.
The fear we learned.
Fear of poor marks.
Fear of comparison.
Fear of failure.

Our students will teach their students the same way.

Professor power.

Teach straight and hard.
Test straight and hard.
Don't give an inch.

Let me start again.

Who has it; who doesn't.
What who has it does with it.
What who doesn't have it does and doesn't do as a result.
This is about what I do with classroom power and why.
This is about what that has led to for my students and for me.

I have it.
I give it away.
I decide no grades, no marks.
I free students to learn.

Why and how did that come about?

In 1982, my students were bored.
I was bored. We were bored.
Evaluations said knowing content just to know it was boring.
Students and content butted, the weakest of joints.

What fostered butting and what dovetailing?
Stressing syntheses led to the flat and merely adequate.
Stressing students' personal practical knowledge, results were rich with connection, with insight.

So what?
How do I do this? How do I get them there?
To make better-informed, well-argued personal curriculum decisions?

Journal-writing.
I say connect

who you are as you
   with
who you are as teacher
   with
the course content

Connectconnectconnect. Only... connect.

Not as an instrument.
You are not a tool.
This is not about how but about who.

This is about you.

Your journals. Your experiences. Your stories.

You.

They sent me this (from Valerie O'Hara, 1984):

Day twenty-two

know do feel
do feel know
feel know do

Do you feel and then do?
Do you do and then feel?
From doing and feeling do you know or is it:

do feel
feel or do
do feel
know know

Do you have to have one main pattern of operation? Is it possible to follow all 3 patterns at different times in different circumstances for different moods? THE TASK: to know myself! But I am so diverse at different times for different circumstances that I find this a formidable task! And do I really want to truly know myself or do I just want to enjoy the mystery?

Student subjectivity precedes objectivity.

Ontology before epistemology.

This is not about how but about who.

This is about you.

Your journals. Your experiences. Your stories.

You.

Yeah.

Me.

When we get personal, to the "I",
     in my classrooms, everyone becomes vulnerable.

When students openly express their real questions, their ignorance, their doubts, they are taking the risk that someone will jump down their throats, will tease them, embarrass them, laugh at them. It is a scary thing I am asking them to do. And not only do they become vulnerable,

I do too.

And they get it. And they do see me, too. This, from Margaret Britton (1996):

the professor

we gathered in the lecture hall,
waiting, on curved edges

while he climbed the 3 podium steps
we opened our writing pads,
wondering what this man might say

he adjusted his glasses,
lacing his parchment fingers together,
   pausing
before he spoke of his life,
of all that he'd learned

well, he said, when I was only 50
I careened down green-tangled slopes,
past children wearing somersaults,
through the arms of silver cartwheels,
and landed wrong-side up
against the prairie sky

then he stopped

Any questions,
he asked

finally, from some row of faces,
amid pencils perched suspiciously
a single person asked

is that all?

why no, he said, of course not
on that very scorched July day,
I climbed to the top again,
and careened back down
the green-tangled slopes of fifty

then,
gathering his notes,
tucking them
into slit-edged pockets
of his dinner jacket,
he shuffled off-stage

I cannot go back to the way it was.
Yet I still have the power.
I use it.

In those journals, I have 25 sets of honesties, unknowns, worries and egos in the palms of my hands. If I am over-tired or if I am hard-hearted or if I don't read their body language right (and reading body language online is possible), I can bring the whole fragile construct down about everybody's ears.

   So I create a safe learning environment in my classes, with vigor in the rigor. That is for Lecture #2.