THE DALLAS INSTITUTE OF HUMANITIES AND CULTURE’S
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From the Cowan Center Director D
What is a teacher? Reimagining the Teacher Through Classic Literature
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Everyone agrees that teachers are of singular importance in education, but the conversation is usually focused on what and how to teach, not on what a teacher is. In this book, Summer Institute faculty will begin a new conversation, using the method that has awakened the hearts and minds of educators for more than 30 years and exploring teachers both good and bad from great literature.
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www.dallasinstitute.org, “Year of the Teacher” page. These pre-ordered books will be available at the Education Forum, September 6-7, 2013. We thank Kathy King for the many photos she has taken for the Dallas Institute.
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In Sundayʼs newspaper appeared an article about a “bee mystery.” For several years, Michael Wines reports, honeybees have been dying “en masse,” with a disturbing escalation in honeybee mortality in this last year. Although we typically think of bees as pests, as we all remember from high school biology, the honeybee is a critical part of a complex eco-system touching our everyday lives. Bees pollinate the blossoms that grow into many of the foods we eat. Wines points out that although no definitive scientific explanation has been found for the bee deaths, beekeepers are pointing to the new pesticides and to plants whose seeds have been genetically modified to withstand weed killers as culprits. Pesticide companies deny a correlation between their chemicals and the bees. But the situation reminds me of the precariousness in which we live and about which we are often too busy to be aware. Assuming for the sake of argument that there is a relationship between the two would mean that bright, capable scientists had created products that, while they addressed one problem, caused a new one. But because they appear to have “solved” one problem without fully considering the impact it would have on the whole, a crisis has erupted. Thinking and acting in isolated forms— in ”silos,” we call them—has an impact on every aspect of our lives. It began innocently enough, in the 17th century, as Louis Bredvold explains in his book entitled The Brave New World of the Enlightenment. At that time, one of the most important discoveries was that “all motion can be measured mathematically” (28), a relief to scientists and thinkers who had been unsettled by Copernican astronomy. In a rapidly changing world, the appeal of the seeming reliability of measurement quickly spread from science to people, with
Thomas Hobbes becoming the “first notable writer to proclaim that we could solve our social and moral problems if we only made social sciences as scientific as mathematics and physics” (Bredvold 33). Well, with our educational system and our educator training—those most complex and human of things—being so bound up in “science” and measurement, we seem to have reached the apex of this thinking in our day. Unfortunately, though, we are not happy with the results. Stating the obvious, I would suggest that this is because that while aspects of human behavior can be understood scientifically, understanding and attending to the whole of a human heart and mind and body requires balance, a broad vista from which to see and cultivate the multitude of qualities and mysteries that make up the human experience. In education, we are “killing” bees because we have narrowed our focus to what can be measured. We need balance, particularly in our schools. This is where we develop those civic virtues (or not) that are essential to the freedoms we enjoy. We need an understanding of what the Greeks called physis—Nature, the flow of things—which would mean being carefully attentive to the whole while addressing its parts. Losing a part really means losing the whole when it comes to life. We need it all. Our students need to be challenged and also supported. They need math, science, and technology, but they also need literature and history and languages and music and art of all kinds. They need to lay the foundations for physis so that they can draw from and add to all kinds of knowing throughout their lives. With gratitude for your support, Claudia Allums
To read the Cowan Center Newsletter online, go to the Cowan Center page under “Programs” on the Dallas Institute website: www.dallasinstitute.org.
Front row from the left: Lois Hardaway, GayMarie Kurdi, Edwina Nicholson, Belinda Nowlin, Pamela Whatley, Claudia Allums, Sharon Harris, Camille Cain Second row from the left: Jennifer Gunn, Isabel Ramírez, Kristen Harris, Catherine Pate, Doretha Allen, Ron Francis, Russ York, Andy Mercurio, Alfonso Correa, Laura Hayes, Amy Wilkinson (Not pictured: Mike Crivello, Molly Gittemeier, Allen Gray, Tiffany Holmes, Yvonne Janik, Gladys Herrera, Onyema Nweze)
Spotlight
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Founded in the fall of 2005, the Cowan Centerʼs Teachers Alumni Advisory Board is a body of twenty-four veteran, Summer Institute alumni school teachers who serve with the Cowan Center director to oversee and promote the programs of the Teachers Academy both to the public and in their schools and districts. Research alone is ineffectual for understanding the practical impact of educational reforms and trends. Serving in Pre-K—12 classrooms, the members of the Teachers Alumni Advisory Board are valuable professional resources that help the director stay attuned to the reality of educational practices in primary and secondary education both locally and across the nation. The Teachers Alumni Advisory Board stands—both individually and collectively—for the ideals of the Cowan Centerʼs Teachers Academy:
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Teachers are the foundation on which the educational enterprise is built; Teachers are called to bear witness to the body of knowledge that comprises their discipline and to its value in providing those who learn a distinctive way of knowing the world;
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Teachers are intellectual professionals and should be encouraged to act accordingly; Teachers inspire students to love learning if they first love learning; Teachers should be encouraged to cultivate their passion for learning, particularly in their disciplines or subject areas; Teachers have a gift for understanding student needs and for creatively communicating the knowledge they possess; Teachers make the world.
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The primary task of teachers is an essentially spiritual work: to awaken all students to the joy of learning, to inspire, guide, and advise them as they make progress or encounter difficulties along the way. The results will be students who know how to make judgments in the conduct of their lives; and these results will be visible to teachers, principals, parents, and the educational community. Dr. Donald Cowan
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Responses by members of the Teachers Alumni Advisory Board A teacher is a
vessel of
information, wisdom, and noble character. Camille Cain U. S. Studies
A teacher sees the potential in her students, expects them to reach it, and they do.
guides them until
Molly Gittemeier 2nd grade
societyʼs benevolent caretaker—one who
A teacher is one who dedicates herself to educating others. She
an artisan of the mind.
is
Belinda Nowlin Kindergarten
A teacher is called
Allen Gray Assistant Principal
A teacher is Athena—the shape-shifter, the strategist, the guardian of the city.
Sharon Harris High School English
passionate, learned soul who guides her A teacher is a
students to be virtuous members of society. Kristen Harris Middle School English
Teachers are sensitive spirits, overly aware of the world and acutely mindful that teaching is a craft, a sacred art form. Tiffany Holmes High School English
invites, inspires, and leads learners on the path A teacher
of the noble pursuit of truth and wisdom. GayMarie Kurdi High School English
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to help young minds recognize and cultivate divinely-given talents and gifts so that they can use those talents to bless the world.
Summer Institute Alumni are invited to submit essays by August 31, 2013, for consideration for presentation at the 2014 Summer Institute Alumni Symposium.
a skilled, empa-
Essays presented at the Symposium are published in a monograph.
Onyema Nweze Reading/Language Arts
A teacher is
thetic guide
who empowers learners to explore new ideas and to reach a greater understanding of the world and their place in it. Amy Wilkinson High school English
A teacher is
places the concerns of others before his own. A teacher is the ultimate server of societies, present and future.
A CALL FOR PAPERS ON
Go to Amazon.com to order Sacrifice, the 2013 monograph.
A Teacher By knowing, Leads a student to seek— By witnessing, To listen—
The Education Forum: W T
By listening, To speak—
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Mike Crivello High School English Teacher Mentor
T These are teachers!
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Save the Date:
September 6-7, 2013
By showing, To see—
By leading, To know.
Contact Dr. Claudia Allums for information: callums@dallasinstitute.org.
Collectively,
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455 years
and more than
In this Education Forum, educators and citizens will discuss and explore the qualities and nature of the teacher as revealed through literary images of teachers and mentors. What is a teacher? Reimagining the Teacher Through Classic Literature, a book written by Summer Institute faculty, will be introduced at this event. Pre-ordering begins April 5 on the “Year of the Teacher” page of the Dallas Institute website. www.dallasinstitute.org
170,000 students. 3
The gods beneath us By Pamela Whatley
We always have a reading at our Teachers Alumni Advisory Board meetings, and I look forward to the discussion that follows, but in general, lyric poetry is not my favorite thing. So I groaned inwardly, well, maybe outwardly, when I saw the poem next to my place setting. However, when I read the opening stanza of Stanley Kunitzʼs “Among the Gods,” the first image moved me outside of the immediate moment and into a memory: Within the grated dungeon of the eye The old gods, shaggy with gray lichen, sit Like fragment of the antique masonry Of heaven, a patient thunder in their stare. I have been here before. Kunitz transported me to the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, Turkey. The only real world traveling I have ever done (you canʼt count a beach in Mexico as world traveling) was to one of the most ancient cities that still exist in the world. Below the central core of the city is a huge cavern that in earlier times was a cistern, collecting and storing water. It is alive down there now, complete with a small cafe where one can sit in the semi-darkness and sip tea, contemplating the wonder of ancient architectural accomplishments. Most amazing—and it is a literal maze down there—is the forest of pillars and blocks that support the central part of the oldest section of the city. Theyʼre like the “quarried blocks” in the second stanza of Kunitzʼs poem. The Cistern itself dates from the 6th century, and its infrastructure was partially restored in modern times. But in the restoration, the architects apparently pilfered ancient monuments above ground for blocks and columns to use below. On these ancient 4
blocks are carved faces, “shaggy with gray lichen,” evoking mythology from ancient times. Like “the old gods” in the poem, their eyes are “staring” at visitors with “patient thunder.” I recall being surrounded by gently moving water in a semi-lit cavern—beneath and yet apart from the city—as a profound sensation. Deep in its unseen depths, Istanbul was literally supported by its gods of antiquity. At the board meeting, the first stanza of Kunitzʼs poem brought this memory back. The following discussion with colleagues that I have grown to admire at the Cowan Center moved me further into the idea of a divine infrastructure, and my imagination
“After I completed the Summer Institutes of 1988 and 1989, my classroom, like the ancient Cistern, became crowded with the gods and heroes that populated our readings.” transported me back to my own classroom. After I completed the Summer Institutes of 1988 and 1989, my classroom, like the ancient Cistern, became crowded with the gods and heroes that populated our readings. Athena was there. I tried to keep her within reach so that she could snatch me out of an intemperate utterance, as when she had grabbed Achillesʼ hair, saving Agamemnonʼs life in the Iliad. The groans of Prometheus in the corner sometimes had to remind me to be patient with a cocky, newly appointed administrator. But this new image Iʼm seeing is a classroom supported by a different “antique masonry.” It is supported by pillars of wisdom
from great literature. Sturdy blocks chiseled out of a clear sense of purpose preserve the integrity of this place. Standing on a timeless foundation like ancient Instanbulʼs, the teacher in this room is secure. Such a teacher can maintain a vision of the true purpose of education and of her role. The state of public education and the incessant reforms are of great concern to us all. In general, these reforms have chiseled a business template into all facets of education, and with it comes the erosion of our true work: shaping young people into lovers of learning, those who will one day be the stewards of our way of life. Recently, I heard three teachers say that they are considering leaving the profession. It is to these that I offer this image of the classroom as a timeless, ancient Cistern peopled by the gods. In this hour, wisdom and clarity of purpose will sustain you. The authority that comes from understanding the role of the teacher will be the pillars that support you. There are signs that things are turning. Administrators are joining to oppose the most debilitating trends, and legislators are amending previous educational fiascos. Perhaps the worst is over, but know that your efforts will continue to help shape the future. When times are rocky, Iʼve found the old house on Routh Street a good place to quarry another pillar from another stone. For me, sometimes Zeus is there and we chat. Heʼs gotten over Prometheus and he reminds me both that the teacher is his representative in the classroom and that the teacher is robed in the timeless authority to which our spirits respond. A while back, I heard him grumble that if this robe doesnʼt fit, we must keep “chiseling,” keep putting it on. Eventually, the “patient thunder” will win out, he says, and it will fit just fine. Pamela Whatley taught mathematics for 33 years in the Dallas ISD and holds degrees in mathematics and English.