What images or models are your teachers taking into their classrooms? How do they see themselves and their students? What is really driving them?
Distorted images and motives can be difficult to identify but express themselves in all manner of persistent issues that do deep damage. Welcome to this episode where Anthony Hurst names a number of potential mindset problems, or areas of possible problems. He provides clarifying examples and concrete suggestions that will increase your perceptiveness about these mindsets and guide your response to problems. Anthony has experience as a teacher and school leader. What he explores here stems from his humility in learning from his own mistakes and allowing that to build his understanding of these mindsets.
Why does this matter? The work you do to develop the self-awareness of your teachers and aid the formation of healthy mindsets will have more to do with long-range fruitfulness than the best policies and policing that you can provide. It’s the difference between joyful labor and desperate survival.
The theme that runs through the talk is combatting disinterest, disrespect, and disorder in the classroom so that learning can be wholesome and fruitful for all involved.

Content vs. student
Teacher pets
Strictness vs. leniency
Inconsistency and mood swings
Respecting the personhood of every student
All work, no play
Criticism vs. complements
Unrealistic expectations

 

Winning students’ hearts
Interest in their personal lives
Passion for learning and for the subject
Special projects
Diversity of style

 

Model neatness
Know your subject
Plan your projects
Follow a schedule

 
Links

This recording was first published as “Teacher Generated Problems” on The Dock: https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/teacher-generated-problems/
Other recordings from TW 2010: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/fbep-teachers-week/faith-builders-teachers-week-2010/

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