Tuesday, December 8, 2009

For 'Cause

It's super-duper hard to hold on to a student-centered focus. That's why I moved away from the workshop back then. It takes a tough combination of confidence and humility-- it's hard to have the humility to step out of the way and let the students learn, and so any teacher who does that is constantly second-guessing herself, trying to find a balance between direct instruction and student practice. From the outside, such an approach doesn't always seem "rigorous" enough, and since many people equate rigor with value, it takes confidence to stand behind this philosophy.

For all those reasons, it can be kind of lonely, too.

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