In Which Amy Goes Back to School... (Myspace Blog)

So, today was the first day of a week that I get to spend teaching in my daughter's Freshman English class. This is very exciting to me. And I walked away very impressed. We started off the class with introductions. Part of which was my statement of teaching philosophy. I was met with blank stares when I said that I believed in teaching people to be critically concious (which I expected), so we began a conversation about the definition of the word 'critical'. I encouraged them to build their own definition, while making hypothesis about the type of teacher I was. Ideas included a teacher of law, a philosopher, a psychologist, and a 'free-thinking scientor'. These kids did an amazing job of building a definition of critical thought... and then we moved into trickier territory... culture. The point is to move on towards an understanding of cultural relevance, but you have to have a basic understanding of culture to be able to understand its relevance. And, many are aware of the fact that culture is a sticky word that tends to be hard to define. It is still a work in progress, but by the time they left class we had filled up chalkboards of ideas they had gleaned from academic definitions and they had the beginnings of a workable definition. I was amazed - I had planned to cover a whole lot more, because I had not expected them to be able or willing to go so deeply. So, tomorrow we go at it again. And I am more excited about it than I was today. There is hope... that these kids, taught in sitdownandshutup classrooms since Kindergarten, can catch on and dig the idea of being critically concious means that they can still grow to be critically concious adults. What a wonderful thing.