Conversations and teaching: An essential pairing
As teachers, were you to take Featherstone’s statement as your mantra, you no longer would make delivering information your priority. You commit to not allowing others to dictate what you teach. You do not pass on content that you don’t value. And you do not offer lessons that you did not have a hand in creating. You do not talk at students. There’s a greater chance for them to listen if they feel listened to. Your content leads to conversation; conversation, then, creates content.
As a teacher, you may feel pressure to stay with your curriculum and not fall behind your colleagues. But you may want, perhaps feel that you must, to invoke Featherstone’s aphorism, to hear from your students and allow the unexpected to emerge.
If good teaching is “the content of a thoughtful conversation,” teachers have to be willing to spend that time. If they choose to invoke conversation, they may be a maverick among their colleagues, but they will have to live with that.
How might Featherstone's aphorism relate to the rest of us?
