My continuing education
As another term winds down, with all but the final paperwork done, I am left thinking once again about how my work as an educator provides such an education for me.
This term, from the research reports alone, I was treated to new insights about lots of things -- from Galapagos turtles to the undersea earthquake that triggered the 1970 snow and mudslide that buried the Peruvian village of Ancash, to the history that led up to Iran's nationalizing the country's oil resources.
Factual information is by no means all I learn. From my students with their rich variation of languages and cultures, I am constantly faced with other thought patterns, other ways of looking at the world.
My classroom is a microcosm of contemporary multicultural society, and I notice, term by term, how culture evolves. Right now I'm observing in real time how people develop ever more facility in using digital devices, especially smartphones. It has to be said that many of the younger students are becoming overly dependent on them.
Technologies come and go, but it remains a real privilege to work with students from around the world, to talk with them and coach them and learn from them, both directly and indirectly, about a myriad of things.
Now another class has ended; people who spent nearly four months sitting cheek by jowl are now scattering to go their separate ways. Many, of course, will move to another class at the college, but the classmates will change next term.
Though I'm still not using a smartphone myself, when the next class convenes in the New Year, we'll be working in an upgraded "smart classroom." I hope the students and I don't get too carried away with delegating our smarts to machines.
As an educator, I am of the view that we should define ourselves not by what we own, but what we know, how well we think and what we can do to serve the world we share.
This term, from the research reports alone, I was treated to new insights about lots of things -- from Galapagos turtles to the undersea earthquake that triggered the 1970 snow and mudslide that buried the Peruvian village of Ancash, to the history that led up to Iran's nationalizing the country's oil resources.
Factual information is by no means all I learn. From my students with their rich variation of languages and cultures, I am constantly faced with other thought patterns, other ways of looking at the world.
My classroom is a microcosm of contemporary multicultural society, and I notice, term by term, how culture evolves. Right now I'm observing in real time how people develop ever more facility in using digital devices, especially smartphones. It has to be said that many of the younger students are becoming overly dependent on them.
Technologies come and go, but it remains a real privilege to work with students from around the world, to talk with them and coach them and learn from them, both directly and indirectly, about a myriad of things.
Now another class has ended; people who spent nearly four months sitting cheek by jowl are now scattering to go their separate ways. Many, of course, will move to another class at the college, but the classmates will change next term.
Though I'm still not using a smartphone myself, when the next class convenes in the New Year, we'll be working in an upgraded "smart classroom." I hope the students and I don't get too carried away with delegating our smarts to machines.
As an educator, I am of the view that we should define ourselves not by what we own, but what we know, how well we think and what we can do to serve the world we share.