Teaching as a Process

While most of Boice’s argument here seemed pretty straightforward, I did feel that there were parts that had never been explicitly pointed out to me before as a teacher. We constantly talk about teaching the process of writing, but seldom discussion what the process of teaching is. Perhaps allowing for more flexibility, especially in differences between my two classes is the answer. Allowing for the understanding that each section of English 1000 is different, even the two that I am teaching. Boice’s process for in the classroom suggests to me the beginning of this model.

Free writing is not my style of reflection or drafting, so I struggled with Boice’s idea that free writing is essentially the crux of all active waiting but I think his comments about “Pausing While Working” hit home. My students do take the time to write in class, causing a pause in some of our discussion/lecture, but I find myself pitting one class against the other (albeit unintentionally). During discussion, one class will come to a conclusion/question more quickly than another. I find that this makes me impatient with the second class and perhaps part of the problem is that they need more wait time to consider/collect their thoughts. They may come to different conclusions, and that should be ok. While one class seems to be right on my wavelength --discussing, noticing, questioning the things that I do, my second class has a different style of thinking. They come to different conclusions, and I need to not only to accept that, but also to give them more time to think about the discussion.