The Heart of
Teaching: Finding
Your Place as a
Teacher
Joseph Kyser, CEIT & STH
Introductions
• Name, School/Department, Preferred Name
• 5 second Pause
Structure
• My Hope
• Set of questions
• Reflect for 2 minutes
• Discuss as a full group
• Scholarship
Getting Started:
Your Identity as Teacher
• What does it mean for you to teach at Boston
University?
• What are you trying to achieve with your
teaching? What is your aim, goal, or purpose?
• What experiences, emotions, or reactions do
you want to have in connection to your
teaching?
Begin to Dig:
Focusing on the Student
• What experience do you want your students to
have in your classroom?
• How do you actively engage your students
throughout a class session?
• What expectations do you have for your
students? What constitutes an “ideal student” in
your class?
Digging Deeper:
Building Community
• How is community intentionally built in your
classroom? Unintentionally?
• How are you learning in community within your
discipline? How does that learning influence
your classroom?
• How does community foster deep connections
between you and your students, your students
and your discipline, and your discipline and
you?
Digging Further:
Tapping into Wholeness
• What does “educating the whole student”
mean to you?
• What does “teaching from your whole self”
mean to you?
• How are elements of these principles evident in
your classroom today?
Finding the Heart of Your
Teaching
• How does transformation occur in your
classroom?
• How does your classroom promote liberation for
you and your students?
• How does your classroom encourage the
integration of content knowledge and the
”human experience”?
Scholarship
• Parker Palmer
– The academy is disconnected
– As teachers we often hide behind our fears
– Community helps resolve many of these issues
– Community in the classroom
– Community between colleagues
– Community within a subject-centered education
From: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of
a Teacher’s Life
Scholarship
• Rachael Kessler
– To teach at our best selves requires us to know our
deepest selves
– We do this through:
– Finding times of silence and stillness (rest)
– Defining our meaning and purpose
– Finding joy in what we do
– Using creativity to feel inspired
– Accepting the unknowns of the universe
From: The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection,
Compassion, and Character at School
Scholarship
• Paulo Freire
– Education can be used to oppress or liberate
individuals
– Challenges the traditional viewpoint of teacherstudent relationship in light of power differences
– Calls for an education based on dialogics
– Dialogue is essential as we explore content,
human-world relationship, and generative themes
From: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Scholarship
• bell hooks
– The classroom should be a place of freedom and
empowerment
– Pulls from feminist theory of liberation
– Promotes a multi-cultural approach to the classroom
– “Any classroom that employs a holistic model of
learning will also be a place where teachers grow,
and are empowered by the process. That
empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be
vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks.”
From: Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of
Freedom
Scholarship
• Tobin Hart
– In this information age, knowledge has a transforming
power that must be utilized more in the classroom
– The classroom must address the different ways of
knowing and learning (multiple learning styles) if
students are to be transformed
– Believes transformation calls us to a deeper knowing
in the heart where “paradox and possibility open up.
Old divisions of either/or move even beyond
multiplicity to seeing with a singular depth, to the
unifying heart of things; the loving heart is the bridge
between worlds.”
From: Information to Transformation: Education for the Evolution of
Consciousness
Questions?
The Heart of
Teaching: Finding
Your Place as a
Teacher
Joseph Kyser, CEIT & STH