“All true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands.”
– Soren Kierkegaard, from The Word for Teaching is Learning (Pradl, 1988, p. 33)
My English/Language Arts classroom is a student-centered classroom. The teacher is a learner. The student, the learner, is a teacher. This reversal of traditional classroom roles, in my classroom, is organic, ever moving, ever breathing, ever forming. On some days I may indeed spend time briefly lecturing on a topic, giving information, explaining certain ideas. But, as Kierkegaard notes “the helper must first humble himself,” and I believe the teacher must give his or her students the freedom to explore and learn for themselves. In giving up the mantle of total power in the classroom, the teacher humbly gives power to the students, but in intentionally giving one’s students the power, the teacher invites true education to begin: the teacher invites a give and take of ideas; the teacher invites students to greater mastery of a topic; the teacher invites joy and passion in the classroom; the teacher invites students to trust, both in the teacher and in themselves; the teacher invites real learning to enter and superficial learning to exit, forever.
-Timothy Ducey, May 2013
timothy j-p ducey 