The Inadequacy of the Teacher-Facilitator Model
The conceptual framework of the role of the teacher is in constant flux. We now know that the stand-and-deliver method, while captivating in film (I'm still a fan of The Great Debaters), is not the best way to foster complex thinking in a learning environment. This method has rightly been supplanted by the teacher-as-facilitator model.
We'll take it as a given that the best models for learning all require some formulation of constructivism. Ideas take on texture and life when they are explored in the light of one's own experience, or the shared experience of one's community.
The teacher-as-facilitator construct is useful, but it alone is not enough. Consider it this way:
The best concerts, symphonies, jazz ensembles, provide entertainment for the audience not only because of the music they produce, but exactly because of the demands the music places on the musicians themselves.
There is something incredibly vibrant about a performance where everyone in the room, even those most expert with their instruments, are challenged by what is taking place. There is meaningful, but not detrimental, risk. This is the moment when the jazz trio seems to almost lose the time signature, or the key, but it is then recovered. The live performance that is over-rehearsed or over-scripted stagnates the environment into which it is introduced.
It must be not just the students as players in the ensemble, but the teacher, also.
If previous frameworks in education made the teacher the performer, while the student-audience observed, and current frameworks to some extent reverse those roles, I suggest that whether the teacher is conducting the symphony, or playing an instrument himself, he must be equally invested in both the intellectual risk and potential positive outcomes of the performance.
The question isn't: Who is the audience? Rather: How do we get rid of the audience entirely so that everyone has joined the band?
An authentic learning environment must be challenging to all participants, especially the teacher. We must be transparently and consistently exploring our own knowledge questions and discoveries in full view of the student-learners. Of course these questions may pertain to the craft of teaching, but they can be about so many other things, as well.
The authentic learning environment is enhanced when the teacher-facilitator also functions as the visionary-participant. There are three necessary values outlined in the visionary-participant model. Importantly, this is not a sequential process, rather it is an organic process where different components are differently emphasized at various points throughout an academic calendar.
Three Keys to Being a Visionary-Participant
1. Share Failures
For two years I worked alongside my ELA seniors to host a symposium where educational practices were challenged and discussed by a panel of experts. For two years, we ran into road blocks (some external, some internal) that prevented us from successfully orchestrating the event. It was only this last year that we successfully hosted The ReThink Symposium. However, the classes that were unable to realize the event experienced just as much as the class that ultimately inaugurated it. Everyone had skin in the game. We risked relative failure and worked toward success as a community with a shared vision. No simulations of competition were required to motivate students to participate, and no grade was required to threaten non-participants.
We shared real measurable objectives as well as the risk of actual but minimal failure. In risking shared failure, the students had the opportunity to not only construct meaning for themselves as to why the endeavor mattered in the first place, but to also observe how an educated adult responded to circumstances where desired goals were not achieved (therein re-purposing undesirable outcomes as learning tools).
2. Share Interests
Sharing interests as a visionary-participant means connecting academic and professional curiosities with the daily activities of the classroom. The ways this can be accomplished are numerous.
It is dishonest and ineffective to demand students take intellectual risk when we are not willing to do the same. If we are calling students to challenge their presuppositions and intellectual biases, we must be total participants in this process. This fundamentally changes the work of the educator. No longer is the primary thrust of one's energy focused on preparing specific classroom content, but rather highlighting connections between the academic goals of the classroom, the interests and experiences of the student, and the interests and experiences of the teacher herself.
This major shift in thinking is made incrementally, and is critical to the health of community learning. It adopts the best features of the teacher-as-facilitator model, and importantly adds to it a heightened awareness of modelling the ways in which classroom content becomes and remains captivating to the teacher, first.
Practically, this turns the classroom into a workshop. In this creative space, everyone's ideas are explored, and the teacher uses the curriculum of the classroom as only one tool among many to turn ideas into plans, into projects, into shared interests and experiences.
3. Share Goals
Perhaps most exciting is the sharing goals aspect to this model. In the healthiest learning environments, with the teacher serving as a prototype, students begin the challenging but life-giving process of identifying major goals for that academic year.
In the visionary-participant model, the teacher is charged with helping students learn to network with one another, with other educators and experts, and to work toward meaningful and student-identified markers of success.
This past academic year, I had the opportunity to work with a student who wanted to transform a prison-like courtyard space at the heart of our school into an outdoor classroom. Significant money and human capital was required to add vegetation, a large pergola, learning spaces, and a water catchment system. She first networked with me because I had previously expressed interest in completing a major project of this sort the year prior. It wasn't as if I was merely facilitating her project, but it was something in which I had a vested interest.
As she moved forward to lead the completion of the project, I supported her through project planning and development, I served as a fellow participant by helping her identify her network, and by working through the best methods of procuring the funding required to transform the space. This particular project was hugely successful due to her creative problem solving and leadership.
Most importantly, however, was that she invested other students, clubs, businesses, and faculty in achieving a goal that benefits them all. Sharing goals of this sort brings authenticity to the learning environment.
I would add, content knowledge is not an afterthought within this model. Rather, a project like this exemplifies the need for clever, clear, coherent writing (through grants and proposals); the identification and application of mathematical formulas (useful in both the pergola and water catchment system); and the use of science and biology (significant research into the sort of plant life that can sustain in this particular climate was a necessity).
Each of these values serve as pillars for this model to have meaning for both the student and the teacher. However, these are only introductory steps. Don't hesitate to email for more specifics and information on training.
Questions for Collaboration
In whats ways do we view required curriculum as a hindrance to the Visionary-Participant Model? How might we adapt our daily practices to create room to explore this educational paradigm?