SPECIAL REPORT
me explain the problem. I drew pictures on the board,
thinking out loud. She and the class listened hard; I
could feel them listening. I can’t tell you how affirming
such listening is.And then,when I seemed to hit a wall,
a dead-end in my process, Eleanor asked,Would it help
if you used this flashlight and this orange, and before
long, I was the sun and a classmate was the Earth, and
another classmate rotated the orange as he revolved
around the “Earth.” I was directing the action out of
my own body of understanding, and I could feel myself
moving toward a solution.
It took time. It felt like a few minutes to me, but it must
have been much longer because Eleanor, sensing that I
was on the brink and knowing that learning is a series
of “flights and perchings,”2 put her hand on my shoulder and asked me if I’d like to let it rest a little.
I went back to my desk in the far rear of the darkened
room and pulled out a notebook in which I began
to draw, still noodling the problem. I could feel that
my solution was imminent; I could feel it. One of
my classmates, sitting in the dark on the floor next to
me,whispered urgently that he knew the answer to my
question.He could tell me.And he began to explain.He
wanted to be helpful, but resentment and self-protection rushed up inside me: here was a robber entering
my house.He would steal from me an understanding
that in a minute or two,by my own efforts,would be
mine. I was desperate. I leaned down and hissed into
his face:“Shut up!”And he did.
The Harkness table is the first thing a visitor notices,
and I can’t overstate its importance to the tone and
conduct of the class.The students and their teacher sit
down as equals.The table itself reminds us that this is
collegial work, and its great smooth plane physically
connects us;we look directly into each other’s faces,
engaged in mutual investigation.The physical fact of the
table seems to encourage and facilitate collaboration. I
am at eye level, not above them, not apart from them.
I am face to face, and I am listening. I try to do nothing
that will take the attention off the students and their
investigations. I do not even stand to use the board
(though sometimes they use the board).A visitor to
my class might get (and sometimes does get) the impression that I am doing nothing. But appearances are
deceiving.
My students and I may sit as equals, but our jobs are
not the same.My job is to present the students with
a challenge that will suitably engage them and push
them toward their own “horizons of understanding.”3
In English that means assigning readings, for instance,
that are not merely age appropriate but will also pique
the students’curiosity and give them something with
which to wrestle intellectually and emotionally: Julius
Caesar,The Old Man and the Sea, Heart of Darkness,
Mrs. Dalloway, Hamlet, a poem by Auden or Plath or
Simic or Komunyakaa. In a listening pedagogy, the
teacher thinks carefully about each challenge he offers
his students. It is a delicate decision, based on a close
(and fallible) reading of the evolving skills and interests
and needs of each group of students.And it is a crucial
decision because the essential dynamic in the classroom is centered there, in each student’s engagement
with the text.
I began then, for the first time in my life, to solve a
problem by laying out an algebraic formula (I don’t
know where that impulse came from), and as I constructed the formula, the pieces fell, breathtakingly,
into place. It was an “aha” moment. I knew, perhaps, for
the first time, the euphoria of discovery.
The teacher’s task, then, is to listen to that dynamic, to
be an informed and open-minded witness to her stuI walked home that night with the knowledge that dent’s explorations—and to be genuinely interested.
there would be a fundamental change in my teaching.
In English, as in every other discipline, each student
comes to the assigned problem with his own store of
A TEACHER’S TASK
knowledge and experience.Ninth graders will read
I joined the faculty at Phillips ExeterAcademy im- Julius Caesar with a very different perspective than
mediately following my year with Eleanor. I found at seniors do. So we let the students lead the way.They
Exeter a school culture that valued student-centered, make the observations; they raise the questions.When
discussion-based teaching. Let me say here that all the teacher is focused on how the student is making
discussion-based classes are not student-centered; wit- meaning, the student is empowered to explore those
ness my own early teaching—students talked a lot,but issues that capture her imagination.The students can
I saw to it that they talked in the “right”directions.And feel the teacher’s respect for their ideas; their learning
people teach out of who they are, so there was—and environment is nurturing and safe, and the emphasis
still is—much variation in how the discussion-based is on their own thinking process: an“answer”is merely
classroom is conducted at Exeter.But what was going one solution to a problem, one result of a thoughtful
on in the English department when I joined the faculty process.
seemed a particularly good fit with what I wanted my
teaching to become.
The students come into class having prepared individually, but once seated at the table, they work collectively.
3
Shay Mayer, conversation October 2005 in reference to classroom observations relevant to her dissertation, Analyzing Agency and Authority
in the Discourse of Six High School English Classrooms, Harvard University, 2006.
24 THE KEYSTONE MAGAZINE