Head to Head

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On that day, I became a man. Later, my dad and I shared our first beer and went out hunting for the first time. I took down a 300 pound elk with a bow and single arrow.

While I’d like to do a Newkirk here and expose the narrative in the last snippet for what it is, the truth is I think it works. Also, I’d be afraid to do that for fear of turning an eye towards the own narratives I employ elsewhere.

The sentiment though is interesting. It’s about how teachers establish different kinds of ethos-es (ethoi or whatever for those of you who are uptight).

To be honest, I don’t think most teachers I know can effectively argue that they shouldn’t move into a computer classroom because they aren’t tech savvy and that could impact how students view them…because nearly everyone I know has trouble getting the damn VCR/DVD players to work in “traditional” classrooms in tandem with the state of the art speaker and projector systems.

“Traditional” classrooms are changing and it seems a good time to consider the implications it might have for our different kinds of ethos-es and what narratives we might spin about them.

I like the teacher expert role. I even like playing the expert coordinator when searching for answers within the knowledge base of the classroom. There is something dramatically fulfilling about admitting to a group of students that I do not know a particular answer. Being faced with not even knowing the question however, is an instability that I am not comfortable with. I do not play that role very smoothly.