After a 14-Hour Tuesday, I'm Up And At 'Em Once Again - Philosophy of Education

A few years ago, with retirements and repositioning, I was approached to teach an undergraduate version of Philosophy of Education. The gurus who I adored and who took me under their wing, wanted me to give it a shot. I asked around to see if I could make it a service-learning course, and they asked me, "Whatcha got?" I proposed doing the course in collaboration in middle school students at turnaround schools in Bridgeport.

The service arrives when the young people teach undergraduates about their philosophies in life. We couple this with course readings and, this year, we are pairing the community work with a reading of Ghost by Jason Reynolds who will be one of the authors coming for Saugatuck Story Fest (Ghost, by the way, is Lossine's nickname and I first bought the book for him - which he loved). Cool beans that Reynolds will be with us this Fall.

The only text I left out this year (supplementing it with other readings) is my boy Dewey. Oh, he's there and it's fruitful, but I'm not going to assign an entire text of his; rather, we will read several pieces to bring his expertise to our thinking.

Once again, I will use Kristina Rizga's Mission High simply because she does a journalistic job of detailing a pro-student high school and lays out how philosophical foundations conflict with one another. I appreciated the chapters that bring forth the debate as well as the personal storytelling.

It's a large class, as always, and I'm always a little nervous to teach it, simply because I have so much literacy bias and approach everything like an English teacher. I admit this every step of the way and I ask students to keep me in check when I get a little too literary.

I think this is my 5th time teaching the course, and 4th time as a service-learning course. I had a 14-hour day yesterday, because I started at 7 a.m. working with a principal on the arrangements and returned from teaching at my usual late hour only to finish this morning class (before blogging here).

Syllabi are hard - one has to where they hope to go for the next 15 weeks. I'm detailed and I've laid out the plan of action.

Get me a cup of coffee and I'm ready to go.