The one rule of teaching

by | Thursday, May 05, 2011

Pauline Kael is regarded to be one of the best film reviewers to have ever lived. Sam Sacks has a piece on Kael in which he describes her style of film review, one based less on academic nitpicking and the presence (or absence) of directorial flourishes than on her personal aesthetic response to cinema. She is quoted as saying that there is only one rule in filmmaking:

There is only one rule: Astonish us! In all art we look and listen for what we have not experienced quite that way before. We want to see, to feel, to understand, to respond in a new way.

I read this quote and immediately realized that this rule applies to teaching as well. I have often described teaching as doing two things – making the strange familiar (an eclipse of the sun is caused by the moon falling into the earth’s shadow) or making the familiar strange (all matter is essentially empty space). What is common is the sense of surprise we experience in both cases.

It appears to me that very often we forget the value of astonishment and awe in teaching and learning. This is where the quote above really connects with my idea of teaching. Repeating the quote but by changing just one word—replacing “art” with “teaching.”

There is only one rule: Astonish us! In all teaching we look and listen for what we have not experienced quite that way before. We want to see, to feel, to understand, to respond in a new way.

How do we as educators meet this goal of “astonishing us all.”

A few randomly selected blog posts…

21st Century Skills? What do they mean?

A decade into the 21st century, how are we doing with the movement to "position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education." The National Journal Online has been conducting an discussion on this topic... some very interesting views represented there, from...

Obama’s gmail account

Did you know that any email sent to barackobama@gmail.com goes to an Indian software developer! Strange but true!

11/26/2008

Mumbai, 11/26/08 Nov. 27: School children hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of terrorist attacks in Mumbai at a school in Ahmadabad, India, on Thursday. (Photo credit: washingtonpost.com) The last few days have been very strange... dream and nightmare in...

Rethinking technology & creativity, now in paper form!

Rethinking technology & creativity, now in paper form!

For the past 4 years, the Deep-Play group has written a series of articles for the journal Tech Trends under the broad rubric of Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century. The first article was published in 2014 and we are still going strong....

The 60 second lecture

I received an email yesterday from the State News (our local university newspaper) about what I thought of the 60 second lecture—a trend sweeping through online courses. Some of my first thoughts about this are below. If you don't know what they are, check out this...

Flip/Flop: Goodbye 2022 – Welcome 2023

Flip/Flop: Goodbye 2022 – Welcome 2023

Since 2008 our family has been creating short videos to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of another. Our videos are always typographical in nature with some kind of an AHA! moment or optical illusion built in. This year’s video is no different. Check it...

Understanding Chromics

Scott McCloud is one of my favorite people. His book Understanding Comics is just wonderful and I have used it in many of my classes. It is a great way to start a course. Scott made news recently for creating a 38 page comic book to introduce Google's new browser...

5 Comments

  1. automation courses in chennai

    We wish to thank you once more for the beautiful ideas you offered Janet when preparing her own post-graduate research and, most importantly, regarding providing many of the ideas in one blog post. If we had known of your web-site a year ago, we’d have been kept from the needless measures we were participating in. Thanks to you.

    Reply
  2. Michael

    We understand the need of the hour in teaching. Astonishing is a pretty good technique. However, the persistence and prolonged maintenance of this astonish us is going to be critical issue.

    Reply
  3. Alice

    yes, “Atonish us!” means we always want to listen and read about new things, and even contemplate new feelings. These are also very important in education. The world changes everyday, education should be ussually refreshed to strive to a new height.

    Reply
  4. Anna Hayes

    “I read this quote and immediately realized that this rule applies to teaching as well.”

    You’re a star in teaching and education, Punya!!! You always try to get the new thing, apply new method! I admire you alot!

    Good luck to you!

    Reply
  5. Jeff

    I agree! What’s amazing is that, with the practically limitless availability of fabulous resources that are available to educators now, we still find lots of classrooms with a single voice (the teacher’s) and a room full of passive, disengaged students. Most of us entered the field of education with a deep passion for our work. What happened to the passion? Are most educators burned out? What do schools need to do — and I mean everything should be on the table — to not only energize and rejuvinate teachers but to provide structures for creating engaging instruction and curriculum?

    Reply

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