what I learn

It has been quite a week, with much going on -- and visiting classes has been the best part by far. It has been like Christmas, each class a different gift: inside the same little cramped 143 or 144, each teacher sets up different approaches, different ways of being with students, different rhythms to the class. Each class is for that reason refreshing, and might set me off to thinking about (for example) how important the phrasing of questions is for how students will respond (or even if they respond), how important setting up class patterns is (start each class with writing, or with a review of the assignments; end each class with a recap of what happened and how it ties to what is to come, or with chances for students to write questions about what's going on), and how important it is to vary the rhythm of a class (as I watch different teachers move from whole class discussion to small group discussion of a text, or vice versa).

I am reminded, more than anything, of how a successful class is woven out of decisions big and small. And of how the big, more structural decisions about the overall tenor of a class and about how we want to shape our authority are played out through the small decisions about where and how we sit and stand and move and talk, about how we phrase questions, about how we ask students to get up and move, all that. But those big decisions, too, the ones tied to the kinds of choices offered in the Tate book between different or overlapping conceptions of who students and teachers are and what learning it, give us the grounding for deciding what small specific moves we make in a class: If I want to take on feminist practice, will I sit up front the whole time? If I want students to question and experiment with how communication shapes the power relations among us, how do I phrase the questions I ask or, even, who asks the questions?

It's all fascinating, and subtle, and amazing to watch. Neither Fred nor Ginger -- even for all her dancing backwards and in heels -- had anything on a successful classroom waltz.