E A R T H S I D E
USEFUL TEACHING IDEAS FOR TEACHERS AND PARENTS
The Teacher as a Sower of Seeds
Teachers do not fill students up with skills as if they are empty buckets. They simply plant a seed.
Our philosophy matters. Whatever it is, we need to be able to clearly explain, at least to ourselves, what our ultimate goals in teaching are. Our philosophy and our goals will determine our choices in regard to teaching approach, strategies, materials and sources.
Too often teachers feel as if their task is to put enough information into their students so that they are able to do well enough on various assessment tasks. With the advent of state benchmark testing there is added pressure on schools to simply ‘perform’. Yet anyone who truly loves any subject knows that their love was not fully formed or even largely complete in school, much less in primary school. What occurred perhaps at that time was that a seed was planted, or a number of them, by a teacher, a parent, or by the chance discovery of an
important author.
How much better then if our teachers and schools were allowed and encouraged to spend their time sowing these seeds, rather than acting as if each field of knowledge was something mechanical and dead, merely to be collected, dissected, categorised and eventually put to some financially responsible use.
Not the flower
Nor the root
Not the leaves nor branch nor trunk
Not the lily
Nor the fronds
Not the twig or bark or fruit
Before and after all of these
Just the seed
Just the seed
Viewing the teacher’s primary role as one of planting seeds requires an about-face in the way we view education and schools. It will require us to trust our teachers, rather than to continue to burden them with bureaucracy and centralised testing. We will have to trust them to use their initiative, their creativity, and their knowledge of the children given into their care. It is a necessity, not a fantasy.
The alternative is to continue to pretend that teachers are able to do their work properly without that trust, and fully encumbered with all the bureaucratic trappings of mistrust that currently exist.
That is the fantasy.
Earthside Education
(+61) 0449 025167
ES005© Sean David Burke 2010. Free to Copy as is.
Sean is the author of Lighting the Literacy Fire: Creative Ideas for Teachers and Parents
Earthside Blog Index
1. Get a Grip: Starting the Day with a Handshake
3. Teach Something Meaningless
5. The Teacher as a Sower of Seeds
8. A Succession of Memorable Experiences
9. Writing Verses for Your Class
