The Teacher in Me.

                In my early days of teaching, I heard a lot about the carrot and the stick. There were traditionally two ways of changing behavior (which I always thought was a strange way to characterize learning. But I have never much cared for behaviorists.) A horse was encouraged to move forward by having a carrot held before him. The stick was beating him from behind.

                As I took my place in the human laboratory that is a classroom, I learned to do both. I viewed the carrot as the praise I put on papers, the encouragement I gave in the classroom, the enthusiasm I displayed in my lessons, and the trust I built between myself and my captives. The stick was the grades. Standard practice reasoned that students would find motivation in the desire for good grades. Work that was difficult and justified poor grades would therefore raise the bar of performance.

                In time I realized that the stick worked for a minority of my students. Some were not prepared by their families to desire education. Others felt that reading and writing were a waste of time. Some truly believed that they would never be capable of succeeding in an English classroom. I wanted all my students to succeed. I lowered the bar, or inflated the grades.

                I have taken a lot of heat for that over the years. There are times when I have believed I was not doing my students justice, or I was a lazy teacher, or I wasn’t fit to be a teacher. Then I noticed another thing. The students who wanted to learn more and excel at the subject did. I didn’t shake their desire to read more and express themselves in writing. I felt that I was not doing them any harm. I could engage them in intelligent discussion and academic thinking in the class. I pointed out where they could improve in their writing. They usually did so because they wanted to.  

                At the college level, I have been unable to shake the philosophy and the style of instruction I  learned in 15 years. I tell myself I must be more demanding, I must give more D’s, I will be less forgiving of late papers and absences. It never works. I hear the philosophies of other teachers – people I respect – and the sub-text is that I am not a good teacher. Perhaps I am not. That is a devastating notion to one who has taught for 25 years. But my rationalization is that my teaching fits my personality, and there is room in the profession for those who wish to inspire students to think and write and feel good about it. I feel especially justified in that when I teach future nurses and policemen and the many people who will never write a paper for an M.A. or scientific journal.

                A woman I also respect recently expressed it this way:

                …opening hearts opens minds. If we can keep the hearts open, and get 
                good conversation and discussion building out of that heart-space, 
                then they will learn the critical thinking skills that are so necessary for 
                those who will be leading us into the future.”              --Beth Weaver-Kreider

I will hang my hat on that.