from Teaching Academy participants

'Not knowing' is a challenging and largely unexplored point of departure for teaching and learning. In sustaining a focus on the question of “Can I, as a teacher, be asking questions all the time to which I don’t know the answer”, the academy provided the opportunity to explore new ground.

The activities in the academy were not so much an invitation to buy into some alternative method of education but an invitation for every participant to look at the “what is” of education. In this sense, it was a challenging invitation to look at the ordinary in an extraordinary manner.

I am a PhD Candidate in the faculty of Education at the University of Toronto, focusing on Krishnamurti education. I attended the Teaching Academy out of interest in getting together with other educators and those interested in education to see what I could learn and to perhaps piece together some practical, concrete claims about teaching and learning.

 

The Academy exceeded my expectations in all regards. The facilitators demonstrated exceptional ability at leading the group out of the temptation to reach claims quickly; they created an atmosphere of questioning right off the bat, while also keeping an eye on the goal of taking away (upon completion of the course) concrete claims we can make about learning.  It was clear to me that their intention was for us all to work together through dialogue (rather than swirl aimlessly in personal philosophy through endless discussion) to arrive ultimately at what each of us feels necessary to have in a classroom for learning.

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"I think the best short summary is this: after years of teaching, at the end of the 2 weeks, I knew less than I thought I knew at the beginning." 

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