Learning to drive.
Eric Johnson
11.3.09
CP III
Does Higher education provide an appropriate balance between formal, mediated entry and learning-while-doing? (pg. 30).
This is a very valid question, especially as it pertains to the music education program at Westminster. I am constantly frustrated by great load of educational, psychological and musical theory that must be processed and learned in our time studying to be music educators. While these are exciting, thought provoking and interesting topics of conversation, they so rarely help me to deal with the “real life” things that will occur in a music classroom. However, unlike so many institutions of higher learning, there is an attempt to balance the theory with a large amount of real life observation and teaching experience.
While I am not sure there is a solution to the problem, there is this floating attitude in schools that prepare future educators that they will leave that institute with their gold star and be ready to step into classroom with their philosophy and theory in their back pocket - armed and ready to divert any sort of crisis. It is my strong opinion that this is a ridiculous way to think. Learning to teach a group of students is a process which is very closely connected with a self-discovery of whom I am as a teacher and who my students are. This is a viewpoint exercised in Critical Pedagogy. Education is an adventure, and that your first real day on the job is the first step of a journey of a thousand miles. As one education advocacy website puts it - “Parents tolerate sitting in the passenger seat while their teenager tries out the driver’s seat for the first time. It’s nerve-wracking, but parents put up with it, because they know there’s no better way”. The only way to really learn how to be the teacher you are meant to be is by getting in the driver’s seat and hitting curbs, learning gears and sometimes slamming on the brakes of everything you thought you knew.
