Kool Aid.

2004-11-30 at 8:43 p.m.

Well, except for a "Professional Development" seminar next term. The purpose of which: to help me get a job.

Heh.

Would I recommend PSU? A friend of my family went to another institute of higher learning in this same area--a private, more expensive one--and will constantly make I think unintended digs about the lesser education PSU is giving or the more elevated and lofty experience she had (at the same school Monica Lewinsky attended, so grains and salt and all that). As much as I rail about PSU, that gets my back up.

Given, I haven't ever gone to the other institutions in the greater Portland area. I can't vouch for their programs. And PSU, organizationally--well, let's just say it leaves a lot wanting. And this is from Organizationally Challenged Me. And some of the classes have been, what can I say, marking time. They were okay. There is always potential for greatness in any class and for the most part it's what we make of it and I've gotten something out of each class, but they haven't really spoken to me, they haven't enchanted me or mesmerized me or seduced me.

Except one, and that class alone has been worth the price of admission. I've drank the Kool Aid, I'm totally subserviant at the altar of Ken.

He's the professor we've had pretty much ever term, and no matter the title of the class: "Reflective Practitioner", "Instruction and Technology", or "Classroom Management", they were all the same--negotiating classroom discipline, the incredibly intricate web of social interaction of all these teenagers you're going to have in your room for an hour or so at a time. And I want to take a refresher course in this dude every two years for the rest of my life.

His philosophy has been really simple--kids have three (or so) primary motivators that conflict. They want to belong, they want to succeed, and they want to be happy. Sometimes belonging precludes succeeding--and vice versa. Your job as teacher is to craft an environment where success--doing the right thing--doesn't keep them from belonging, where kids have the opportunity to do the right thing, where they are responsible for choosing to do the right thing, where they get to act on the desire to do the right thing.

The rest of the classes have been how to do that. And its so delicate and intricate, and yet at the same time, so simple. Communicate, and allow others to communicate. When you're hurt, embarassed, proud, happy, say so. When your student looks angry, sad, afraid, give them a chance to say so. Don't try to solve their problems for them, and don't ask them to solve your problems for you--really know whose problem something is. Give your students a chance to learn how to talk to you and to each other because they may not be learning at home. And they'll learn more subject matter in a class where they can communicate and where you communicate with them.

It's so hippie, and yet so basic and fundamental that I'm completely and wholeheartedly sold on it. It scares me in that slightly risk-taking way that makes me really feel like I'm on to something, and at the same time feels so natural that part of me wonders if I wouldn't have done part of this plan anyway.

So that's what I think PSU has been worth. This ultimately life-changing aand yet at the same time course-affirming line of classes with this guy who has a bad haircut, the goofiest circa-1983 oversized glasses I've ever seen, and the most revolutionary-yet-common-sense plan of classroom management I've ever seen.

And that I couldn't have gotten at any other school. So it's just as well I could figure out how to get my license on my own.

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