The Lure of Learning in Teaching

1. The Lure of Learning in Teaching Theresa Chuntz, Sami Dansky & Kathleen Leonard By PresenterMedia.com

2. Introduction • Teacher, students, and content are the center of the educational experience • Content, or curriculum, is the key • Take away teacher, student still has content, and vice versa • Teaching creates connections between teacher, student, and content so that educational experiences can be had

3. Introduction The Lure • In coming to know, we reach beyond the boundaries of ourselves in order to connect with an otherness that exists outside ourselves. • As teachers we attempt to lure students into reaching beyond themselves to connect with the subject matter.

4. Introduction Teachers need to: • Relearn how to love their subjects • Invite students to inquire with us about subjects (without harming ourselves or them) • Create a place where the love of learning can be nurtured • Learn how to love and honor our subjects, ourselves, and our students • Engage in the struggle of teaching and schooling in a way that preserves our teaching loves and lives

5. Love of (and) Learning • In Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson draws parallels between learning and “coming to know” • Learning to love and coming to know make her feel “alive” • In An American Childhood Annie Dillardcapture learning’s attraction and the lure of the world around her. • Love of learning: -Connects us to the world -Engages our minds and emotions -Illuminates the sensual and the sacred

6. Libraries, Ponds, & Streams Annie Dillard loved to read, and her mother would drive her to the Homewood library. She was 12 years old and had an adult library card. One day she found a book called The Field Book of Ponds and Streams, which taught her all about different aspects of nature, including how to conduct experiments, collect specimen, and set up aquariums. She loved this book so much that she wanted to write to the author, but was nervous that he would think her ignorant. Inside the back cover was the stamped check-out card, and when Annie saw this she realized that she and the author were not alone in their love of nature. Annie wanted to contact the other library patrons that had checked out this book, but sadly realized that because she was a child, she had more hopeful prospects in life than the adults who were reading this book. She thought it was unfair that the Homewood residents had little time and money, and therefore probably could not do all the things she herself planned to do after reading this book.

7. Libraries, Ponds, & Streams • For Annie Dillard, the library opened up new worlds, free of charge. • “One can almost smell the books’ mustiness, peer into the dimly lit stacks, and certainly feel the coolness of the marble and stone floors. These sensual features seem to enhance the library’s intellectual and emotional allure.” • Dillard wanted to “take her understanding further, fill in the gaps and holes” and “correct those troublesome conceptions that didn’t fit with her ways of seeing the world” (schema) • Students try to fit new things into their current understanding of the world, but they often don’t fit. Some feel secure in exploring these misconceptions, but others are too insecure to do so. • “Coming to know seems to inevitably entail…a sense of insufficiency”

8. Life in Rocks and Gems • When her grandparents’ neighbor Mr. Downy passed away he gave three grocery bags filled with rocks to the paperboy, who then gave them to Annie. She went to the library to try and determine what kind of rocks they were. She did all sorts of experiments on the rocks, and then remembered stories about people who had cracked open rocks and found gems inside, so she decided to try that. • Soon she realized that rocks and ponds were not the only treasures in the world. • “There must be enthusiasts for everything on earth – fanatics who share a vocabulary, a batch of technical skills and equipment, and perhaps, a vision of some single slice of the beauty and mystery of things, of their complexity, fascination and unexpectedness.”

9. Coming to Know Other Worlds

10. Annie Dillard • In coming to know we reach into other worlds with fascination, awe, and respect • Coming to know reaches out, and in the process, looks back upon itself and see holes, gaps, insufficiencies • We seek companionship • The last page of the book to see who checked it out too

11. The Space Between the Known and the Unknown • Desire to know more • We reach out to grasp something related to itself and to its present knowledge • Example: • Known: Field Book of Ponds and Streams • Desire to reach the unknown: Receiving 3 rock-filled bags, scratching and smashing them to test their mettle, and then combing the hills for more specimens

12. Reaching across from the known to the unknown raises the possibility of discovering something new about the world and possibly ourselves. “This love of learning is enticing. In coming to know, there is the possibility of losing ourselves in the endeavor.”

13. Engagement with learning leads to frustration and self-doubt. Why? Because we are constantly performing tasks for the first time. (failure can be frustrating, and repeated failure leads to self-doubt)

14. Otherness • We look for companionship and community • We want to share the pleasures of learning • i.e.: as learners, we want to have other “hungry learners” around • Camaraderie with other teachers

15. It is the absence of a community and meaningful discussion that deals a significant blow to teachers’ endurance. Teachers need to continue to learn. Without companionship in their love of learning, teaching feels isolated and can be difficult to sustain for a long period of time. Teachers yearn for intellectual connection and companionship.

16. Injustice If you were “poor and black,” you could not easily explore the “life-filled streams and ponds.” Incongruity between the library’s freedom and the real world’s limitations

17. Teaching With a Love of Learning

18. Teaching “In teaching, we are trying to enable others to reach beyond themselves with the promise of achieving some understanding, some different way of seeing and being in the world.” An invitation to become intellectually and emotionally engaged.

19. The Invitation • It might occur on one day or persist throughout the year. • They can be loud or quiet, showy or plain. • It requires a measure of authenticity • It has to be real • Conveyed by the teacher • Felt by the students

20. An Invitation to Receive the Human Inheritance and Join the Discussion

21. Learning is, in part, learning to engage in, be critical of, and become a part of conversations. • Different classes, gendered, and cultural dynamics exist and are continually reinforced and contested to determine which conversations will prevail • which understandings reach what kids • Teacher’s job to illuminate shared and distinct, common and repressed, mainstream and even outlawed understandings

22. We must offer more than what is already known. “If we offer no more, if we don’t teach with a love of learning, if we do not examine our culture’s shared and distinct understandings, then our invitation is bound to be flat and dull.”

23. An Invitation From the Depths

24. Falling in Love • Comparison to falling in love • We are confronted and comforted by another’s significance • The type of person we choose reveals the contours of our heart (Ortega Y. Gasset) Teaching with a love of learning allows others to see what we cherish. Mrs. Hughes example—”someday in your lives you may wake to a new world in which you feel a stranger” ISSUE AN INVITATION FROM YOUR DEPTH

25. AN INVITATION TO EXPERIENCE THE ALLURE • Teaching with a love of learning, and asking others to come along, is an invitation to experience something alluring. • It seems that many teachers, when teaching with a love of learning, are offering to others something magnificent to behold. • We can promise the possibility that we might place ourselves closer to the grace of great things or create openings to some “truly precious things.” • We create those openings by inviting students to come closer to those “truly precious things” when we teach with a love of learning. • Teaching with a love of learning is an attempt to achieve proper interaction between student and subject, and student and great or precious things.

26. AN INITATION THAT EXPRESSES FAITH, INSISTENCE, AND RESPECT • In teaching with a love of learning, we hope and believe that our students will be lured by the object of our love. • Inviting students to come and share our love of learning, relies on a faith in students capacity to be attracted by the lure of our loves- without this faith it is difficult to imagine how we can invite students to join us. • Not only do we need faith but also a large part of teaching is spent finding ways to connect the students with a subject- a kind of insistence is required. • For this to happen we must see, know, and understand the lure that the subject has for us, in addition to envision, come to know, and understand our students. • Lastly teaching with a love of learning (inciting others to become part of the human conversation and to be lured by the grace of great things) entails a particular kind of respect- one that honors a students integrity and recognized their complexity.

27. CONCLUSION • Teaching with and learning from a love of learning is a precious and fragile experience. • To be lured by learning is to ignite a desire that reaches beyond our boundaries- subtract this lure and it is difficult to locate teaching or learning.