It was during my teacher credentialing program that I started noticing that a lot of my professors had very similar opinions about education. They all seemed to, more or less, take the same stance on important big picture issues like ‘rewards’ or ‘social justice’ or serving a particular population - they were, for the most part, teaching from the same camp. The over all message of the program had been thought out and was cohesive.

At the same time, I was working as a TA for an undergraduate writing program that served incoming freshmen in one of the colleges at my university. It needs to be acknowledged that the mission of this program was to expose freshman to a myriad of ideas, from various disciplines, and let them make their own sense of everything through expository prose. But if you juxtapose the two programs, one had a very clear mission / goal / stance / intention / approach and the other, may have intended to in theory, but in practice, did not. Basically, the writing program threw a lot of information at students and then, with some guidance, asked them to make sense of it via trying their hand at writing a first year academic paper. One of the reasons this might have been the case was that the writing program attracted professors from disciplines all over the map, it employed professors who were passionate about their subject matter, but who’s work did not connect in any apparent way. On the other hand, the teacher credentialing program (from my perspective) seemed to be very selective about who it invited in, many of the professors had strong personal relationships, and collaboration - real-true collaboration, was the norm.

It was interesting for me to experience being a part of these two programs simultaneously. I used to wonder which approach was better for students: education coming from a very solid camp OR education coming from no camp at all - just individual professors presenting their work and then asking students to somehow make sense of it all - with minimum support.

The whole camp thing is one of the reasons why I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with institutions - educational institutions especially. It’s like you can feel the group-think when you walk in the door. I wonder about that a lot. I wonder about how helpful and / or detrimental it is for the members of the group and also the students the group is serving. On the one hand educators absolutely need to share some kind of common ground - there has to be some sense of community, in belief and action, if anything positive is going to happen. And then, on the other hand, that sense of community can become quite stifling at times. It can lead to educators feeling pressured into teaching material, and teaching in ways, they don’t necessarily 100% align with. 

Here is an example of the group think / practice that I’m talking about: I minored in dance when I was an undergraduate and I remember coming back in the Fall to a department full of teachers that had just had some kind of PD on Yoga. Yoga was everywhere! Even in Hip Hop! I, for the most part, had always taken contemporary dance classes, and there had always been some Yoga incorporated into our warmups but this was intense! We spent at least 20 minutes per class - classes taught by various professors - doing Yoga. But no one discussed this shift with the students. It would have been helpful for our professors to at least acknowledge what was going on and why. They could have said something like “We got together and as a department we’ve decided to incorporate Yoga into all of our technique classes for these reasons……” Then we wouldn’t all have been left with the questions ‘Why are we doing so much Yoga all of a sudden?” This, clearly, is a relatively harmless example.

Another more subtle example that I can give is from one of the elementary schools that I work with. About three weeks after I started, there was a noticeable shift (in the positive direction) toward the way all of the teachers (even the ones that were indifferent to my work) interacted with me. I noticed it within 5 minutes of walking in the door. My gut feeling was “I bet they brought dance up at the last teacher meeting and decided that they were happy with the dance program.” And sure enough, later that day, I heard from a member of the staff that that was exactly what had happened.

These examples aren’t necessarily good or bad but they are thought provoking for me. What happens to people when they become members of a group? Not to mention members of an institution? - An institution with a mission statement! How does this change how people think and feel and operate? Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? In one way the group supports it’s members and in another way it stifles them. I think that people who are members of groups & organizations that tout diversity of opinion might find themselves in exceptionally precarious situations - because the tag line often doesn’t match the reality within - which makes the pressure doubly difficult to rationalize. But what’s the alternative? There is no alternative, really, is there? We are social beings and we are influenced, for better or worse, by the people we are surrounded by. Is a life well lived one that constantly answers of the question “How do I stay authentic in the midst of everything and everyone else?” And “what is authentic?” is a whole other question, best left for another time and place.

I had a really enlightening experience at a dance teacher training program I attended this summer. During our group check in I said something like “Everyone is teaching from a camp and I wonder about the role and responsibility of the institution when it comes to this.” One of the facilitators responded to my comment by telling us about an experience she had with Paulo Freire (yes THE Paulo Freire!). She said that he told her something to the effect of “You have to acknowledge your beliefs / perspective / camp / stance / position to yourself and to your students FIRST. Then you must passionately follow through on those beliefs in front of them.” When she said this something in me totally clicked. You have to acknowledge it to yourself and to them right at the beginning! And then follow through. This has helped me tremendously!!! :) In general, I find teaching (well let’s say any kind of teaching in which students have to be there, or are coerced into being there - so a large part of institutionalized education) somewhat haughty and manipulative. I get frustrated and confused by the disingenuous nature of so much of the teaching I have seen and experienced (not all, by any means - I have had some absolutely phenomenal and inspiring teachers, but for the most part..) The way teacher’s beliefs are often presented as fact when in reality they are mere opinions is something I have difficulty coming to terms with. BUT! And this is a big B-U-T! IF I can shift my perspective to ‘this is an opportunity for students to see someone  1) know themselves well enough to acknowledge their beliefs and perspectives, 2) declare them outright, and 3) act on those beliefs in front of them’, I’m able to avert that line of thinking and questioning that always leaves me stuck at “Wait, why am I teaching again?” Because doing the aforementioned allows me to maintain my perspectives and integrity at the same time. It allows me to NOT feel like I am manipulating students into thinking the way I want them to think but rather modeling for them what following through on your beliefs looks like. This shift of perspective has tremendously helped me. Many thanks Luna!

So, to close this long blog post out, maybe it’s OK for all of my professors / educators / teachers / facilitators to have similar view points - homophily or “love of the same” tends to dictate the makeup of the groups of people institutions produce. And maybe that’s even a good thing depending on the criteria. I just know that it’s helpful for me if teachers acknowledge their camp up front. Then I can actually listen to what they are saying instead of spending all of my energy trying to figure out where they’re coming from.

Oh, and one last thing. I really connected with this big think video below. Tim Harford talks about the virtue of dissent. Toward the end of the video he gives the example of JFK inviting dissent among his top advisors after the Bay of Pigs disaster. I often wonder about this in school settings. Maybe, sometimes, planting a voice of a dissent at a teacher meeting might be exactly what the conversation needs :)

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