I love to learn. In education, this process often becomes dulled by repetition, extraneous pressures, or maybe by difficulty of balancing the unknown challenges of building scaffolding or reach. My Master’s program reached me as no other program I had experienced. I attribute the difference to appreciation of individual differences, both strength and weakness, and willingness to utilize those differences by instructors and by classmates (truly by teammates). I learned from everyone associated with the program. As we went along, we learned new ideas, materials, and techniques, but we also learned our strengths, weaknesses, and areas of growth. It was an extraordinary experience, an experience of family.
Sometimes your strengths come externally. Several times during the program, some of those strengths were highlighted to me. Those highlights took me to my roots and helped me understand how, after 15 years of teaching, I had committed to this vocation those many years ago.
My father, a farmer, never viewed himself as an "educated" person. During the program, the candles he lit many years ago illustrated many of the concepts covered in coursework. I remembered the instructions (for a day's chores) he would dictate over the course of 5-10 minutes expecting me, as a 10 year old, to remember. When I wasn't able to repeat to him all that he had said, he would, after a moment of irritation, give me some key tools to scaffold my memory for the information and we would try again. Writing it down meant possibly losing the paper and all of the instructions as well . . . no good! Needless to say, the work was completed and I learned word games, visualization techniques, and the interconnectivity of concepts in order to NOT FORGET what was supposed to be done. Exemplars, Concept Attainment, "gee whiz dad!" you should have earned your doctorate by now! I guess now I have the labels and a few more ways to use them. More importantly, I have classroom techniques that connect far more intuitively than I previously understood.
My mother, a pastor, was the example of 'drive.' Satisfaction with the 'status quo' was neither acceptable nor (more importantly) of interest She saw a world that was seasoned for exploration, full of people with different ideas, exciting and worthy of distribution. Daily, she reached to others that she might share with or learn from. Interesting, that along with the insatiable drive, came a deep compassion for the disenfranchised that would not allow stragglers to be dismissed. The little one following the pack would catch her eye and the whole team would stop until they were again, indeed a team. Even the 'least' had a worthy contribution that must be shared. The weak, the bleak, and the unique, together made a pretty tough team to beat. Somehow strength came from odd corners but still came. My recent learning experience has helped me reconsider why those teams were successful. Throughout the program, new strengths were discovered from every angle. Those viewing themselves as 'newbies' and 'inexperienced' helped build some of the strongest coalitions of our courses.
My brothers and sisters (and the adopted) comprised a team of up to eight of us scattered across our farms. My earliest years were under the tutelage of an older cousin, but later I played mentor to the crew. We had our share of squabbles about who would do what chores or run what piece of equipment, but generally got along well. We were a team. We shared the same laughs, complained about the same jobs, and tried to avoid the wrath we deserved when we failed to complete assigned projects. What characterized our efforts was cohesiveness in a pinch. When we were working against an approaching rainstorm looming in the distance, a canal with sides about to fail, endangered livestock, or a wheat field fire, the troops ranked together and got the job done. We were inspired. We were a team.
As teachers, what could be more essential to the futures of our students? I hope I have learned enough. Certainly, my current program and the one preceding it have been inspiring and refreshing moments in my career.
RJ Dake
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