What I'm Reading: The Art of Teaching

The Art of
Teaching 

The Art of Teaching
by Jay Parini

One soon gets used to the fact that an element of artifice is involved in classroom performances. In fact, there is nothing natural about teaching; a good teacher may look natural, much as Michael Jordan always looked natural when he went up for a dunk or fell away from the basket, making an extraordinary shot. The natural look, however, is acquired, the product of endless practice.

At first I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy this book, more a memoir really, about evolving as a teacher. Jay Parini is an English teacher. More than that, he's a college English professor. I want to teach math and computer science to high school kids. It seems like a different league entirely.

Through out The Art of Teaching Mr. Parini is constantly mentioning poets and writers: Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, Roethke, Yeats, Stevenson, Yeats, Pope, Sterne, Yeats, Austen, Wordsworth, Hardy, Eliot, and (did I mention?) Yeats. He really liked Yeats. By the end of the first chapter, I was starting to glaze over a little bit and wonder if I really wanted to keep going. But as I thought about it, I realized that the world of Computer Science has it's big names, too: Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Torvalds, Babbage, Turing, Von Neumann, Kottke, and Berners-Lee. Though he was speaking in specifics with which he was familiar, with a little effort, I could generalize his experience and reapply it to my own specifics. The lessons were still applicable.

Overall, I found his journey through academia enlightening and entertaining. I'm glad I stuck with it. All along the trip, he took brief pit-stops to sprinkle in advice to new teachers, and this I found most helpful.

1. Take your students' work seriously (p. 25)
2. Take your own work seriously (p. 119)
3. Be sincere (p. 49)
4. Be confident (p. 50)
5. Risk a point of view (p. 107)
6. Invite criticism (p. 50)
7. Set clear expectations and commit to fulfilling them (p. 119)
8. Welcome Change (p. 155)

While some of these were no-brainers, it's easy to forget them anyway. And some of the others run contrary to my natural tendencies, so being conscious of them should be useful in. Here are several of my favorites in the author's own words:

A teachers' job in the twenty-first century is distinctly political, in that he or she must speak the truth, must find and talk about conflicting truths, must teach habits of resistance that fall under the category of critical thinking.

My notion of the ideal teacher is that of primus inter pares, with the teacher as lead student.

One of the great boons of teaching is the sense of self-development, of improving as one matures. It's always possible to do a better job the next time around. For me, it's academic New Year's Eve every September.

I enjoyed this look into the life of a life-long teacher. Mine will be different, no doubt, but it will also be similar. Hopefully, I can look back on my thought process regarding this book and remember to enjoy the entire process from beginning to end and all the emotions that go with it. In academia, each year ends with the sadness of conclusion, but just a few short months later, we get to start all over again.