Adding my piece to the puzzle.

“We need to take into account the sociocultural contexts in which teaching and learning are occurring.” (from class handout.)

Interconnectedness… The balance that needs to be held in order to create something lasting. Bells sociocultural jigsaw, illustrates how in our practice, everything is related. It encompasses values and goals as well as strategies and skills. The imagery that a jigsaw puzzle invokes for me, is interconnectedness, and the symbolism of all the pieces coming together to create the ‘big picture.’ When I think about what this big picture looks like, I think about it building the perfect teacher.

Relational, emotional, embodied, spatial, caring, social, cultural, ethical and political practice are the puzzle pieces that when pieced together, builds a good teacher. At first glance, this may seem easy enough, but the skill here, is to gain knowledge on each piece, to find the perfect balanced for you. Some may be more complex than others. Everyone will struggle to piece together their own puzzle. There are many ways we portray these things, but what we need to be aware of, is our hidden curriculum as well. A joke, a movement, or ignoring things, can have implications on every one of these pieces, tilting the scale and putting it off balance. It’s not only the things we say, but the things we don’t say. The fact of the matter is, we have chosen these roles, so we need to actively be thinking about the implications.

Building relationships with students, born from mutual respect is important  not only for teaching and learning, but for how your professional jigsaw is considered. Teaching as emotion, stuck out for me, as it is a big part of my specialisation. When you create a safe space for exploration, gives you an emotional investment. The drama and dance classroom is where students  are more vulnerable. By encouraging, sharing and including yourself in this process, caring about them as people, comes with the job. This part of teaching is open to critique as it can be perceived as bias. People believe this can lead to clouded judgement, favouritism and can be draining for the teacher. In class, we looked at having a healthy balance of each puzzle piece. My thoughts are, that every teacher will have one piece that weighs more than the others, because of the nature of their subject, or their own personal preferences, relating to experience. “As an occupation, teaching is highly charged with feeling, aroused by and directed towards not just people but also values and ideals.”(Day, Christopher, ACP & Sachs, Judyth,2004)

“To realise that everything in the universe is connected is to both accept our insignificance and understand our importance in it.” – Jeffrey Fry.

References. 

Day, Christopher, ACP & Sachs, Judyth, 1954- (2004). International handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers. Open University Press, Maidenhead.