Follow the Tao

Last night I pulled The Tao of Teaching off my shelf of teaching resources. I have actually had this book since I was in college, but I never read it. I needed something to read while on the exercise bike at the gym and I figured why not? The book consists of 81 short chapters that relate teaching practices to the Tao Te Ching and Taoist philosophies. The author, Greta Nagel, discusses the idea of yin and yang and reflects on how our institution of education might benefit from a greater balance of these concepts. I earmarked the page where she cites the following statement by Art Costa (1984):

"We need to transform our conception of teaching to encompass this dynamic interplay between mystical intuition and scientific analysis. So far this has not been achieved in our profession. At present, our attitude toward teaching is too yang--too absolute, rational, and aggressive. What is needed is more yin--intuition, sensuousness, and subtlety--to bring back a delicate balance. Children might then learn those other basics: the wholeness and unity of existence, the art of living in harmonious balance with nature and with each other."

 Despite the fact that this statement was made almost as long ago as my birth--I still think it has a lot of validity! We are so overly focused on testing, standards, and meeting benchmarks, that we often fail (because of time constraints, pressure, and mandates) to balance these aspects of education with creative, innovative, and critical thinking inspired activities.

 I am ready to get the yin on! Do you find validity in this statement?

I also received  a question yesterday about what model my current school uses for ELL instruction. Students at my school come from all over the world and often enroll at this school with levels of English language skills that vary greatly. We use a push in/pull out (mostly pull out) model for ELL (called ESL here) instruction that allows beginners to receive a lot of support while intermediate or higher level students can be more independent. Students also have German class which is leveled because some students are native German speakers. Students also begin learning Spanish in 6th grade. So technically, if a student is a native speaker of French (or another language besides English or German), he or she will have to learn 3 languages in addition to his/her native language at this school. I think that is too much! I, of course, value learning multiple languages, but that just seems like a lot for students in middle school! Because the nature of our curriculum (at least at the elementary level) is very student centered and exploratory, there is not a lot of particular focus on explicit language instruction as part of content areas with the general classrooms (besides what is offered by ESL staff) yet the curriculum is great, so I know the kids learn a lot of vocabulary and do a lot of reading and writing for content areas which contribute to language acquisition. I have never attended an ESL pullout class, so I am actually not too sure what type of learning is taking place and how language instruction interacts with content instruction, but I do think that there is a lot of support given to students who are learning English. There is an entire section of the report card dedicated to ESL teachers, so the instruction seems thorough!

If you have any more questions about life at an international school, please let me know and I am happy to create some posts with answers!!