Will's Pedagogy: A Fragment

This post is pretty pedantic; it is a simple summary (in outline form) of my “take” on Will’s pedagogy.

School starts on Monday (August 20), so one day last week I took some time to reflect on what Will taught me about teaching, with the goal of weaving his perspectives into my classes. Maybe this kind of stuff interests me because I have never had a teaching methods class. (Once again, I am a gaping (w)hole!) In the classroom, I rely on instinct and passion and these seem to carry me through….

Anyway, please review the following outline and suggest changes/additions/deletions.

Will’s Pedagogy: A Fragment

A. Approach to Reading is Textualism

1. Textualism encompasses the belief that you can make worlds with texts. There is a connection between world and word.

2. Documents/texts are objective. The words say something definitive.

3. Texts live on; they speak to us; they challenge, confirm, rebuke, etc.

4. In reading a text:

a. Ask what gives a text its animating spirit (for instance, what is the animating spirit of the Declaration of Independence?)

b. Ask what makes a text surprising, delightful, etc.

c. Try to find the power of the text, its order, its aspiration to reconstruct the world, etc.

d. Consider the background of the text, its underlying logic, its theme, its core, its most important word, etc.

5. Try to cultivate in students a “compositional mentality.” That is, cultivate a focus on putting things together rather than tearing them apart.

6. Try to cultivate in students a descriptive (what is it?) rather than judgment mentality.

a. Will tells his students that he doesn’t particularly care about their political opinions or judgments. He wants to know how they see a document. What does a document mean?

B. Broadly Speaking, Will’s Teaching Approach is Propositional Rather Than Socratic

1. The Socratic approach is employed by some teachers to: a) find out if students have done their reading, and/or b) show students how wrong or ignorant they are.

2. A propositional approach involves offering the student propositions/information for application to their studies, their lives, etc. As used by Will, the offering of propositions (that is, the lecture) is followed by a session for questions, a discussion session, and follow-up activities and reading.

–Larry–