Advice from a former teacher
Meera and Mr. Harding met at a cafe shop over two days in which she learned of his remarkable teaching practice. Meera learned about his his path in becoming a teacher, his immediate dissatisfaction with teaching with textbooks from the front of the room (as engaging as it was), his early fear of not knowing enough, his novel practices including being the first teacher in his school to put desks in a horseshoe, his persistence with punning, his engaged approach to George Orwell’s Animal Form, his invoking James Clavell’s The Children’s Story, and his freewheeling conversations that came ‘out-of-the-blue, which kids often took home to tell their parents.
Meera and Mr. Harding stayed in touch throughout the year, meeting at least once a month. She was grateful––unofficially of course––that he served as her mentor. She did not know what she would have done without him.
[Excerpted from Chapter I & II of my book on this website, Listening is Learning: Conversations Between 20th Century and 21st Century Teachers (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).]
