The Heart of Teaching: Finding Your Place as a Teacher Joseph Kyser, CEIT & STH

Introductions Name, School/Department, Preferred Name 5 second Pause

Structure My Hope Set of questions Reflect for 2 minutes Discuss as a full group Scholarship

Getting Started: Your Identity as Teacher What does it mean for you to teach at Boston University? What are you trying to achieve with your teaching? What is your aim, goal, or purpose? What experiences, emotions, or reactions do you want to have in connection to your teaching?

Begin to Dig: Focusing on the Student What experience do you want your students to have in your classroom? How do you actively engage your students throughout a class session? What expectations do you have for your students? What constitutes an “ideal student” in your class?

Digging Deeper: Building Community How is community intentionally built in your classroom? Unintentionally? How are you learning in community within your discipline? How does that learning influence your classroom? How does community foster deep connections between you and your students, your students and your discipline, and your discipline and you?

Digging Further: Tapping into Wholeness What does “educating the whole student” mean to you? What does “teaching from your whole self” mean to you? How are elements of these principles evident in your classroom today?

Finding the Heart of Your Teaching How does transformation occur in your classroom? How does your classroom promote liberation for you and your students? How does your classroom encourage the integration of content knowledge and the ”human experience”?

Scholarship Parker Palmer The academy is disconnected As teachers we often hide behind our fears Community helps resolve many of these issues Community in the classroom Community between colleagues Community within a subject-centered education From: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

Scholarship Rachael Kessler To teach at our best selves requires us to know our deepest selves We do this through: Finding times of silence and stillness (rest) Defining our meaning and purpose Finding joy in what we do Using creativity to feel inspired Accepting the unknowns of the universe From: The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character at School

Scholarship Paulo Freire Education can be used to oppress or liberate individuals Challenges the traditional viewpoint of teacher- student relationship in light of power differences Calls for an education based on dialogics Dialogue is essential as we explore content, human-world relationship, and generative themes From: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Scholarship bell hooks The classroom should be a place of freedom and empowerment Pulls from feminist theory of liberation Promotes a multi-cultural approach to the classroom “Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks.” From: Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Scholarship Tobin Hart In this information age, knowledge has a transforming power that must be utilized more in the classroom The classroom must address the different ways of knowing and learning (multiple learning styles) if students are to be transformed Believes transformation calls us to a deeper knowing in the heart where “paradox and possibility open up. Old divisions of either/or move even beyond multiplicity to seeing with a singular depth, to the unifying heart of things; the loving heart is the bridge between worlds.” From: Information to Transformation: Education for the Evolution of Consciousness

Questions?

The Heart of Teaching: Finding Your Place as a Teacher Joseph Kyser, CEIT & STH