I'm a subscriber to clayart and it is yet another one of the things that I waste valuable time sifting through every day. But every once in awhile you come across a nugget of truth or something that resonates. I admire the moderator's attitude(mel jacobson.) Though I don't always agree with him or much care for his pots, I do appreciate his no BS attitude. So here is a little nugget of wisdom that I wholeheartedly agree with:
"the great sin in teaching is giving too much. `i am a teacher, i have to provide a perfect product for my students`...bullshit. that is not your job, your job is to jog those adolescent minds into thinking, being creative and failure is a big option. if you take away failure, they learn nothing. it is like giving every kid the `stanley cup` just for showing up."
Not so eloquent but definitely to the point.
Cheers!
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4 comments:
Mel's not short of certainty in his opinions, is he, Brandon? Both of you are in teaching positions, so I bow to your superior knowledge of that difficult thing. I've taught, but only adults in a night school. Kids in high school and college are a whole different story. I used to be part of Clayart, but it made me crazy (aside from taking up ridiculous amounts of time), so I bowed out.
One of my students yesterday had some big failures and boy was she surprised. Her first raku firing with me was a big success and yesterday not so much. I think she learned way more yesterday than she did with her successes. We were able to sit and talk about why things went badly and how to fix it. It's humbling but important to fail, you learn much more that way. Teachers, just like parents need to let their student/child fail sometimes and then help them get back up and succeed.
I'm constantly reminding students that they are paying to learn from their mistakes. That's why I'm on staff... to help move them through the process of learning to problem solve. If we do our jobs right, failure is a golden opportunity for anyone who is watching to learn what not to do.
Score one for group learning.
Amen Joel! The hard part is to get them to try again after a failure... most nowdays just quit.
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