Frying Fish

As this is the first of 5 blogs, which I have unsurprisingly placed to the wayside over the course of the semester, I’ve decided to use the first opportunity to briefly discuss the pedagogical perspective as detailed in Fish’s (2008) book Save the World on Your Own Time in relation to my own experience as a teacher this semester. First off, I enjoyed the over arching premise of this book. The idea that we could separate ourselves from our opinions, and focus on nothing but class materials, would be ideal in my opinion. However, in the field of communication studies, where we create a space for students to voice their opinions, and even use them to help articulate class materials, is such an approach even possible? I say no, and for one specific reason. I don’t believe that individuals approach any situation with an undeniable sense of neutrality. Of course, this can’t be proven definitively. Nevertheless, after reading this book, I began to apply this thought to my students, and myself, to see whether or not I could maneuver such an approach. This led me to ask a question:

How do I teach?

After pondering this question, I still could not come up with an answer that maintained a solid middle ground, devoid of subjectivity, and completely open to all information. So how do I teach? At the beginning of this semester, I felt that my reason for teaching was to explore the possibility for a future in academia. Therefore, I would try to orient my class in ways I felt would be the most conducive to learning. Then this led me to consider other questions. What was a good teacher to me? How did my teachers help me learn? Why did certain approaches work for me and not others? Reflecting upon these has led me to the conclusion that I teach students in a way that I believe will be most conducive to their learning, without anymore understanding about who they are as individuals, aside from what they have disclosed to me over this semester. Notice how much I use the word my and I (word? Letter?). I teach the students according to my understandings. Don’t get me wrong; I take each individual into consideration as much as possible. But, I know my overall approach stems from personal biases such as my own experience in undergrad, my learning style, my favorite teachers, and so on. My performance as a teacher is fueled by my personal experiences with other teachers. So I believe I’m informing my students as to how a teacher might operate, what materials should be emphasized over others, and even how they believe they should operate within the space of my classroom. Based on this reflection, can we be flexible? Yes. But, can we be neutral? Not according to this guy (Me).


Sources

Fish, S. (2008). Save the world on your own time. New York: Oxford