Just because you hear it too much doesn’t make it any less true. No, we don’t need to tell them that every damn day, unless they simply don’t believe it. Then I think it bears repeating. Also, it’s not a shameful thing that they make their own choices. On the contrary, I celebrate that fact and don’t see it as a negative thing to say so often.

Kids have always had a choice. I think it’s a large part of our job to lead students where they want to go and give them lessons that we know are useful (and, quite frankly, are employed to give them) by means of what they think is interesting.

Thanks for this. I don’t know so much about that “icon” stuff, but you got Matthews good. I found out the blog made his list, and then I read it and it was like “coaching?” You liked the coaching stuff? Man oh man.

Todd,

Part of where I’m coming from is this: No one told me learning (or not) boiled down to my own personal choice. No one in my affluent upbringing full of distinguished public schools ever communicated that message to me. And yet, I hear it constantly communicated today, constantly reinforced and (terribly) moreso in low-income communities. Since when do kids get a choice? Of coure there’s the old saw about leading a horse to water, but we don’t need to tell the horse that every damn day, do we?

But it makes sense to mark that as the trouble I have with much of what I disagree with on both this blog and TMAO’s. Other stuff, I’m there with. But when we start discussing ways to encourage students to do well and blaming the teacher for not getting the kids on board because s/he didn’t sell the kids on it effectively, that’s where I diverge. I wonder if it’s the student population, subject area (TMAO is working with ELLs, whereas I have mainstream juniors and seniors), colleagues. We’re all pretty close in terms of intentions, it’s the fine details that vary. But you know, that’s probably a good thing for all of our kids to experience that kind of variety. Surely the best way to teach lies somewhere in the middle.

In the middle, they both want kids to learn; they both believe that kids have to want to learn. I think they both want students to be autonomous people, responsible for the decision, “Alright, I’m going to learn this.”

The difference is that TMAO dines regularly on a meal that Todd finds somewhat repulsive. At its strongest, teaching is an extremely manipulative art. Inferring broadly here, TMAO would never take away a student’s right to choose ignorance, nor can he blame himself when his students ultimately seize that option.

But he knows that at his best, he can manipulate them to want to reject ignorance and choose learning.

Once a teacher has the class management steady, has the curriculum and methodology pat, from the perspective of this 3-yo teacher, the manipulation is the last hard thing.

And TMAO does it. Sure he makes the big speeches but he’s also got an enormous quiver with tactics going all the way up the spectrum from passive-aggressive to aggressive-aggressive, from quiet to loud, and small to nuclear.

His kids cram three years of literacy into one for him. They give themselves over to state testing for him. They do these things for him but think they made the autonomous choice to do these things for themselves. I think that until one gets a taste of that kind of crack, 98% is just going to seem like inglorious martyrdom.