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THE VINCENTIAN. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2016. 11.
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A Good Teacher (Part 2 of 2)
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein (1875-1955) German-born American theoretical physicist, Theories of Relativity, philosopher. IN LAST WEEK’S publication, we examined the first five of the ten requirements of a good teacher as presented by Professor Richard Leblanc of York University. Dr. Leblanc, an experienced and accomplished educator, was awarded the Seymous Schulich Award for Teaching Excellence in 1998. His insights in relation to achieving teaching excellence can be found in the 1998 publication entitled The Teaching Professor (Volume 12, # 6). The final five guidelines are presented in this article. However, all ten can be found at the website: http://biz.colostate.edu/mti/tips/pages /GoodTeaching.aspx 6. GOOD TEACHING is about humor. This is very important. It’s about being self-deprecating and not taking yourself too seriously. It’s often about making innocuous jokes, mostly at your own expense, so that the ice breaks, and students learn in a more relaxed atmosphere where you, like them, are human with your own share of faults and shortcomings. 7. GOOD TEACHING is about caring, nurturing, and developing minds and talents. It’s about devoting time, often invisible, to every student. It’s also about the thankless hours of grading, designing or redesigning courses, and preparing materials to further enhance instruction. 8. GOOD TEACHING is supported by strong and visionary leadership, and very tangible instructional support resources, personnel, and funds. Good teaching is continually reinforced by an overarching vision that transcends the entire organization, from full professors to part-time instructors, and is reflected in what is said, but more importantly by what is done. 9. GOOD TEACHING is about mentoring between senior and junior faculty, teamwork, and being recognized and promoted by one’s peers. Effective teaching should also be rewarded, and poor teaching needs to be remediated through training and development programs. 10. AT THE END OF THE DAY, good teaching is about having fun, experiencing pleasure and intrinsic rewards…like locking eyes with a student in the back row, and seeing the synapses and neurons connecting, thoughts being formed, the person becoming better, and a smile cracking across a face as learning all of a sudden happens. It’s about the former
student who says your course changed her life. It’s about another telling you that your course was the best one he’s ever taken. Good teachers practice their craft, not for the money or because they have to, but because they truly enjoy it and because they want to. Good teachers couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Dr. Leblanc’s guidance to teachers becomes especially useful to those who will strive to impart knowledge with distinction. However, while the focus has been on providing useful guidelines to those who are engaged in imparting knowledge in the formal or classroom setting, the instructions also become useful for parents, guardians, and well wishers. After all, we all engage in aspects of teaching on a regular basis. We teach when we are not teaching. Teaching and learning should be fun. Students can learn even the most mentally challenging (or boring) subject areas, when the teacher demonstrated passion and provides evidence that they have exerted effort and energy to prepare their material. Many readers can attest to this fact when they pause to reminisce about those teachers who influenced them most. The teachers who are “called” to the profession, are likely to be passionate, and appear to be always totally prepared. They love what they do. In so many instances, they exert the effort and energy because of the intrinsic rewards they generate. There is a strong, deep sense of achievement when they observe that their efforts bear fruit. However, there are some (many) who enter the teaching profession because there were no opportunities in their desired field of employments. Others function as teachers as a stopgap — until “better employment” is available or a space opens up for them to continue their academic pursuit. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. However, even those teachers who are “in transit”, are required to give of their very best. Leblac’s ten-point guidelines will therefore be considered invaluable to these “conduits of knowledge” also. Albert Einstein’s reminder that, “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge”, fuels us to be bastions of Professor Leblac’s teaching best practice. Our classrooms, schools, and our society at large, will be more effectively and efficiently run when we do so. Good teachers have a positive influence on the world! Send comments, criticisms & suggestions to julesferdinand@gmail.com
‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ MALCOLM X was fond of saying, “Our history did not begin in chains.” Yet every year, that’s where Black History Month lesson plans in schools begin. They begin telling the story of our history — black history — in chains. Young black school children don’t learn that our people mapped, calculated and erected some of the greatest monuments ever, like the pyramids, the sphinx and the obelisks, or that our people were literally the lifeblood of some of history’s greatest civilizations. They don’t learn that calculus, trigonometry and geometry all trace their origins back to African scholars. Black History Month lessons never begin with Haile Selassi I, ruler of Ethiopia, who could trace his ancestry to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and beyond that to Cush in 6280 B.C. Never mind that Selassi actually has the most ancient lineage of any human being in history. Black History Month lessons certainly never begin with one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever known, Hannibal, an African, who conquered and extended the rule of his African Empire into Italy and Spain. The lessons about our history don’t even begin with the kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, Cush or Ghana, all of which rivaled the dominance and territorial acquirement of ancient Greece or Rome. They don’t begin by teaching school children about the ancient Egyptians, who were clearly black Africans and who had arguably the most influential civilization of all time. Ever heard of the Ishango bone? What about the Lebombo bone? They’re only two of the most important developments in the history of mathematics. The Lebombo bone, dating back to around 37,000 B.C., was one of the first calendars ever created, and the Ishango bone has been called “The oldest testimonial of numerical calculus” in human history. Both were created by Africans. Our history isn’t taught in popular culture and it is absent from the history that most teachers deem to be important. That’s why Black History Month was created. It wasn’t a chance to glow over the achievements we’ve heard about time and time again, and to recount stories of Africa’s majesty. Black History Month was a time to bring to light the stories of people from Africa who have contributed so much to whom and what we all are today in human society. When Carter G. Woodson (Miseducation of the Negro) created Negro History Week in 1926, his goal was to teach children and adults throughout the African Diaspora about the proud history and tradition that Africans have. He wanted to teach young boys and girls in the U.S. and around the world, that Africa was and is so much more than people living in huts, hunting lions and dancing around campfires. He wanted all people to know and understand that being African was not something to be ashamed of, but instead should be a point of pride and confidence. Woodson, one of the first black men ever to graduate with a Ph.D from Harvard, doing so in 1912, was devoted to teaching all people about the contributions in our society that come from Africa and Africans, and it
pains me to say, so far we have failed in his mission. If you don’t believe me, find anyone still in school, and ask them to tell you something about black history that predates the slave trade. During the month of February, you can generally count on lessons to begin with some sanatized retelling of a black historical figure like Frederick Douglass, the great orator who counseled Abraham Lincoln and wrote numerous articulate and moving tomes about his life as a slave. Or they’ll begin with Abraham Lincoln “freeing” the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation (and will conveniently leave out the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free any slaves Lincoln had the authority to free, and allowed slavery to continue in the Northern states where his words could actually have carried some weight). At most schools, you’ll be lucky to get a lesson beyond Martin Luther King’s dream and Rosa Parks’ defiant bus ride. Perhaps some devoted teacher will pay a nod to Booker T. Washington or Jackie Robinson or, in recent years, President Barack Obama; but that seems to be about where it ends. Those people were all luminaries and pioneers in their fields, and certainly worthy of our admiration; but they are not the whole of Black History. Black History Month is about Mansa Musa, the King of Mali who extended the empire’s reach into one of the largest on the planet, and imposed the system of provinces and territorial mayors and governors. It’s about Lewis Latimer, the man who invented the filament that took Thomas Edison’s light bulb into the next century. It’s about Robert Abbott, the United States’ first black newspaper publisher and one of the nation’s first ever black millionaires. Black History Month is about Kwame Nkrumah, Bill Pickett, Imhotep I, Samori Toure, Belva Davis, Crispus Attucks, Dr. Ivan van Sertima, Fritz Pollard, Stokely Carmichael, Aaron Douglas, Denmark Vesey, Tousaint L’Ouverture, Nat Turner, Shirley Chisholm, Mae Jemison, Fred Hampton, Scott Joplin, Ramses II, Zumbi dos Palmares and hundreds of other men and women that you have probably never heard about. The march from slavery clearly demonstrated the struggle and the power that black people are capable of, but it’s not all we have contributed to the world. It’s time we used the month of February to extend the dialogue beyond that banal and onto the tremendous accomplishments of Africans throughout history, who have advanced math, music, language, the sciences and so much more for thousands of years. Then and only then will we truly be celebrating Black History Month. Send comments, criticisms & suggestions to jomosanga@gmail.com