During a discussion around the topic Teaching is Dead, Long live Learning tonight, there were a few comments by Stephen Downes that I want to remember… I think because they resonate with the kind of ‘teacher’ that I want to be… but is it the kind of ‘teacher’ that my students want me to be?
While agreeing that old school teaching is dead, Stephen highlighted the one part of teaching that shouldn’t die with some strong and inspiring words:
Teaching as presenting is dead. Teaching is transferring inforimation from one brain into another is dead. Teaching as exercising authority over a group of students is dead. But teaching, genuine teaching, living what it is you want the next generation to see and emulate, is necessary.
…
It takes a conscious effort to be the sort of person you are trying to get your students to be. How often have we heard, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ But of course the lesson is in what we do. Which is why the main lesson from school is obedience and punctuality. It doesn’t matter what you say, you are what you want the world to become.
…
To teach is to be the sort of thing you want your students to be
Wow. What a huge responsibility for all of us – teachers, parents, students, children, grandparents – we’re all ‘teachers’ in different aspects of our lives because we all live our lives demonstrating our learning, skills and attitudes. Being paid with public money to be a ‘teacher’ makes me want to model learning more than anything… but I’m still not certain that that’s what students want from me (for some learners, this works well, but for others it’s a constant frustration….see Good Boy Daddy – Intervention and Learning)
I guess I’m just trying to balance who I want to be as a facilitator/learner and what students want from me as their facilitator/’teacher’. Really for me this highlights that I can “be the sort of thing that I want my students to be”, but (1) this might not be what they want to be, and (2) this might not be what they want me to be.
Do I then decide what’s best for them? Nope. I guess I can only model what I think is right – but that doesn’t mean I can’t accommodate different expectations.
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Hi there Michael,
I’m going through your CSS Challenges on the WikiBooks site.
I am having difficulty achieving some of the more subtle aspects of the required look and feel.
I’m not sure how i can achieve the font effects. Namely, how the first letter of each line in the poem is bold and larger than the rest of the font on that line.
The only way i can forsee this being possible is to wrap each individual letter in a tag so that i can add formatting to that tag within the CSS.
Apologies if i’ve posted this in an inappropriate place. The discussion board has not been created for the Challenges and i wasn’t sure on how to create it.
I’d appreciate any feedback you have to give.
Warm regards,
Luke.
Hi Luke, Great to hear someone’s using the tutorials (outside of class)…Feel free to update and improve them where you see fit!
HTMLDog is a great reference for learning HTML and CSS stuff the right way. Specifically, for the first letter effect, try looking at Psuedo elements in the advanced CSS section (but read the Note there about which browsers it works in!).
It’s fine to comment here on my blog, but feel free to join our Design Websites email group and post questions there as it’s good for learners in class to learn to help each other!
[...] Stephen Downes expressed clearly what it means to model learning – to conduct genuine teaching (see Live what you teach for more): Teaching as presenting is dead. Teaching is transferring information from one brain into [...]