What is My Why?

Pedagogy, Educational Leadership, and Philosophy

Teaching Content: Skill-Building in Inclusive Contexts (2022)

$ 9.00??paperback

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B47QDNRH

Excerpt 1: Assuming it is self-evident that a teacher cannot be said to be teaching if or at any time when a student is not learning, an observer may on such occasions wonder whether anyone in the classroom is actually the teacher. Using Dewey's terms, not only learners, but also their teachers, become better by virtue of repeated experiences of "hitting a target," or, as Bandura suggests, these successes build a person's "self-efficacy," that is, their openness to taking on new projects which demand further skills, yet which a habit of achieving goals makes them believe that by putting forth the required effort they will be able to complete.

Excerpt 2: Self-confident leadership can have a positive effect on relationship dynamics at the heart of any educational enterprise. A leader's authority is enhanced by his or her competence yet also requires an ability to convey and inspire confidence. Nichter and Dowda (2017) suggest that an administrative approach called "strengths-based supervision," in which feedback consistently focuses on positive reinforcement, builds rapport, "instilling confidence, fostering independence, and reducing anxiety."

Excerpt 3: Communicative language teaching is purposeful and content-based. Teachers who are striving to make their lessons more communicative often start by eschewing elements such as rote-memory of unrelated vocabulary words or the filling-in of traditional grammar exercises. Purposeful teaching seeks to engage students in tasks and projects which challenge them to work -- often in pairs or groups -- towards goals and "real world" objectives, such as presentation of a drama production, the design of a publication -- hard-copy or electronic -- or the building of a collaborative product. A thoughtful teacher will find ways to engage students' interests by including them in the process of generating and envisioning these goals and objectives.

To Everything There Is a Season: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Studies (2020)

$ 17.25??hardcover

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095TMG9N9

Excerpt 1: The intensity of these past six months has left me nearly speechless. But since May 25th my heart has felt buoyed and filled with exuberance to witness the resurgent spirit of democracy being expressed in a new generation's "Civil Rights" movement born out of the necessity of the moment in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd from a knee pushed down upon his throat for nine minutes by a representative of the authority of an oppressive and increasingly racist system.

Excerpt 2: Complexity theory and new sciences differ from the Newtonian concept of one event directly leading to and causing only one possible single next event. New sciences and CT draw our attention to the "openness" of systems with many interrelationships among agents and events, and unpredictable results and outcomes, as systems create and adapt to continually evolving circumstances which provide "feedback" influencing the ongoing development of systems.

Excerpt 3: It is argued by the author of this paper that the roll-out of "Kansans CAN" and the IPS in schools across the state, now in its fourth year, would benefit from incorporating more of the best practices which have been developed by special education professionals and transition IEP teams over the past several decades. In particular, it is suggested there ought to be a greater emphasis on self-determination and self-advocacy skills. Findings from a 2018 report by the National Center for Learning Disabilities, as well as descriptions of a "warrior ethos" by Desgrosseilliers (2014) and Shuford (2009), are used to support a proposal for educators and policymakers to more highly value autonomy, assertiveness and persistence in the characters of Kansas high school completers, whom the author refers to as "College and Career Ready Warriors."

Excerpt 4: From an action-research perspective, these personal insights may have generated something like "vivencia," a shared reality between the community (students in the intro special education course) and the instructor (researcher) and functioned to transform the researcher as well as the context influencing the outcomes of this action project and thought experiment. The question that remains, however, is whether a thought-experiment assignment can give students a vivid and realistic enough experience of "vivencia" and the other features of action research for them to internalize the process and understand how to apply this method of inquiry in future teaching opportunities.

I Like the Way Socrates Thinks (2021)

$ 17.00 hardcover

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NRRFQY1

Excerpt 1: I feel so fortunate to be auditing this class in this season and becoming aware of this beautiful picture of the soul that Plato portrays his teacher Socrates developing, step by step, through a conversation of constructive reasoning. I am imagining my own soul and using this new four-part metaphor to think back through stages and events I have lived through, some of which perhaps I am only beginning to understand now. I compare this thinking exercise to my memories of what kindergarten was like or -- realizing those memories have largely faded -- must have been like, and my "second kindergarten" experience, which was when living and working and teaching and learning in Japan in my early thirties reawakened my mind and helped me find a higher purpose in life. Now here I am in my early sixties, and rediscovering that awe I first felt when entering kindergarten in Staten Island.

Excerpt 2: Please allow me to continue interpreting "the good" not as having any moral dimension, because the idea of a moral dimension to the highest form in Socrates' description may distract us from what he is trying to explain. I would like to think of "the good" as the fullest expression of "having in adequate degree those properties which a thing of the kind ought to have," from the OED dictionary definition of good (albeit the adjective good).

In the same way that, as Socrates explains it, the sun empowers eyes and vision, the good brings into existence all the other forms, such as truth, beauty, and virtue. Each of the other forms represents the "properties" which instances "ought to have." The good is, by the description given by Socrates, what makes perceptible the properties of each of the other forms. A short version of a working definition for the good might be "what ought to be," but again in a utilitarian dimension, not a moral dimension.

Developing a Merged Curriculum: The Kansas Elementary K-6 Unified License (2019)

$14.75 hardcover

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097B749M7

Excerpt 1: The "disorienting dilemma" facing any teacher preparation program in Kansas desiring to develop a K-6 Unified licensure program consists in three main facts: the new curriculum must include both high- and low-incidence knowledge and skills; K-6 Unified is a special education license to be earned entirely through undergraduate coursework, displacing the traditional master's level entry system; and K-6 Unified is expected to be a four-year program of study, with no additional credits beyond the typical 124 or 128 required for an elementary or secondary education degree.

Excerpt 2: The new K-6 Unified standards truly have "rocked the world" which previously existed in colleges of education at universities throughout the state of Kansas. It is no surprise if some programs are hesitant to take on the task of self-reflection and transformative learning to arrive at newly defined roles and shifted knowledge bases and skills in order to develop degree programs which fully merge what used to be a clear separation between general and special education. Leaders at those teacher preparation programs which are determined to develop K-6 Unified programs first will need to address the sense of fear nearly everyone involved is feeling regarding changes which challenge some assumptions held very tightly.