Combating Our Own Knowledge

     In reading Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World I thought about the structures that we are facing as we reshape education in this way.  We were taught in a certain way.  Knowledge was structured into finite subjects and acquired facts about these subjects was currency.  To collect these facts meant you were smart.  Having the most facts meant that you had knowledge.  While I completely disagree with this construct of knowledge, it is how we were taught, and largely it is how students in this country and beyond are assessed.  When we consider this global competency, I think we have to look closely at how knowledge and intelligence are constructed, assessed, and lauded within our school community.  What kind of learner is celebrated in our community?  We have to be willing to work against these notions that are ingrained in our understanding of what a "good student" looks like.  We have to question ourselves and our assumptions every day in order to even make a beginning.  

     I also think that this work calls into question to construct of teacher.  Again, I find myself in a situation of some contradiction.  I am aware of and work against these notions every day in my teaching, and yet they are there.  In our experience, to be a teacher is to know, to be in charge, to give information to students.  And yet that is not real teaching, not in the sense of global competency, and certainly not in the way that inspires critical thinking.  I find that I always have to be aware of that construct, to be aware of the "teacher" in my mind, the person who is supposed to know, to have the answers, to be in charge.  I have to willfully push that teacher identity away in favor of a teacher who has questions, who is part of a community, and who engages in a process of learning with her students.  

     As we do this work, I find that I always have to be conscious of the concepts I am rejecting, and to remind myself that those traditional ideas are alive and well.  It is only through confronting them every day that I am able to move forward and to change.

-Dana