The Wild Triangle
Teacher
Student
Subject
• “As soon as I finished teaching the first class I
ever taught, I asked my supervisor what he
thought. He told me he thought I had taught if
speaking from the next room through a tube.
He was a good coach. With a single sentence,
he oriented me to the real thing” (McDonald,
1).
• “Teacher educators often join the conspiracy
of certainty, too, by promoting sanitized
images of teaching” (McDonald, 3).
• “The most clear-sighted teachers manage
simultaneously to reveal to their students –
and to bear stolidly in mind themselves – that
confidence and certainty are not the same
thing and that doubt is a key intellectual tool”
(McDonald, 6).
• “Reading teaching together is much harder
than reading it alone, however. It requires
finding and inventing ways to put aside the
pretensions and fears that keep most teachers
behind closed doors…(McDonald, 12)”
• “The function of the teacher, then, is to
respond diagnostically and helpfully to a
child’s behavior, to make what he considers to
be an appropriate response, a response which
the child needs to complete the process he’s
engaged in at a given moment” (Hawkins, 53).
• “[I]f you operate a school, as we in America,
almost certainly do, in such a style that the
children are rather passively sitting in neat
rows and columns and manipulating you into
believing that they’re being attentive because
they’re not making any trouble, then you
won’t get very much information about them”
(Hawkins, 54-55).
• “So the first act in teaching, it seems to me,
the first goal, necessary for all others, is to
encourage this kind of engrossment. Then the
child comes alive for the teacher as well as the
teacher for the child. They have a common
theme for discussion, they are involved
together in the world” (Hawkins, 57).
• Writing The Wild Triangle into your
observation report…
From Bill
1) How does Jon demonstrate an awareness of his educational
background and his present approaches to learning and
teaching?
In conversations with you, I have gathered that while
most of your high school history classes were lecturebased, you did have a few teachers in your senior year
who taught differently and who were able to engage the
students and encourage them to think about the choices
that have occurred throughout the course of history
These teachers allowed for classes to revolve around the
ideas of the students, which in turn allowed for
meaningful discussions and greater interest from the
students. These are the teachers who clearly have had
the most influence on how you have tried to teach.
2) How does Jon show he knows his students well and how does
he feels he presents material that engages and is inclusive of all
students?
I have seen you engage students as they entered
the classroom and use this time find out a little bit
about them, whether their extra-curricular
interests, books they like to read, places they go
during school vacation, etc. My observation is that
your students do feel comfortable in your class and
I can see you have made a concerted effort to get to
know them. I note that you have also tried to make
the material relevant to them, often beginning an
introductory discussion based on their lives that
you then later relate to the historical time period or
topic.
3) Does Jon demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the content
he teaches? Or is he determined to acquire it?
While you were a history major in college, and
while this has provided you with a good foundation,
I think you know that you still have a ways to go in
emulating the knowledge base of more senior
teachers. I am also heartened to know that you are
reading as much time as your practicum and
graduate school allow, including books like
American Passage: A History of Ellis Island, The First
World War by John Keegan, A History of the Modern
Middle East, and Unbroken.
From Linda
You continue to work on the relationships that became the mantra of
our fall work, “the wild triangle.” I see in your demeanor that you are
learning to know yourself as a teacher, sometimes struggling with
taking charge and directing students. But you are intent on helping
them learn and you set high standards for them. You are forming
relationships with your students and you should continue to seize
opportunities to talk with them about what they are learning. Create
that space, either in the lab or the classroom, that invites dialogue and
attention. Take time to understand what kind of relationship they are
developing with the “It” of your classroom, the curriculum, the
essential question that guides the humanities work. It is clear from the
way you talked about revising your 5 stations activity that you are
aware when lessons need revising and clarification to ensure students
engage and learn. You have made terrific progress, Nate, and you
continue to grow and reflect on ways that enhance your practice.