John
Dewey said, "Education is not preparation for life. Education is
life."
There
are few professions where you can see the impact of your work so vividly. There
aren't many jobs where hero, friend and mentor are part of the job description.
There are few careers that have such a lasting impact on an entire generation.
I
like teaching. I like learning about teaching. And I especially like reading
others' teaching philosophies. I love it when teachers select analogies, such
as, “teaching is like lighting a bonfire”, or “teaching is like giving students
wings”, that explain, instruct and inspire.
For
me, teaching is a little like stuffing a backpack. You know the ones I mean, the
heavy-duty, oversize backpacks that students shoulder down the halls of our
schools. In these metaphorical backpacks, students carry with them the
knowledge and skills they will need for their journey through life. When
students enter our classrooms, their backpacks have already been partially
filled by families, life experiences and other instructors. The backpacks are
deep and sometimes it's hard to see what they are carrying in there.
Through
our teaching, we attempt to place items in our student' backpacks. All children
do not arrive to school with a backpack full of the same experiences, nor are
they all equally full. When students first enter our classrooms, we must
determine what is in the backpack and begin filling from there. We add the
foundations of language, reading, mathematics, the mechanics of writing and
skill development. We pack in sharing and caring, character development,
listening skills. Art, music and
physical wellness are placed in the pack as well.
By
this time, the students' backpacks are pretty full, but we're not done yet. Our
next job is to expand their backpacks so that more will fit in them. We do this
by asking them to analyze, question and think.
As
children grow and mature, we ask them to look at what is in their backpacks and
apply the items to real world situations. Sometimes, we can actually see their
backpacks grow during class as they experience new ways of thinking about an
issue. And sometimes students have to discard something from the bottom of
their backpacks that has lain there, unexamined, for many years to make room
for a new idea.
The
good thing about stuffing a backpack is that it’s a lot of fun! We also know that as soon as students are out
of our sight, they dump things out of the backpack to lighten the load. With these
characteristics in mind, we can't just force items into the backpack. We have
to get students to want to carry our backpack stuffers around. So we try new
things in teaching. What do students discard? How can we get items to stick around longer in
the backpack? Will this exercise expand
that backpack or not? Mistakes are okay, because we can always try again. In
addition, we find that the students might not notice how heavy the backpack has
become if the stuffing process is interesting and even entertaining.
As
students move through our school system, eventually they leave us. Hopefully, they
take with them backpacks that are full of all the tools they need for a
fulfilling life. Our sincere desire is that they journey farther than we have,
see more, and achieve more. And somewhere along the way, they'll pull something
out of their backpacks and think of a teacher who placed it there.
