Leon Spreyer - Teaching Is an Art: An A?Z Handbook for Successful Teaching in Middle Schools and High Schools

In Zen Buddhism, one is instructed to approach life with a beginners mind. Once you know all about something, you close the door to growth and become a threat to the learning process, especially if you are in the role of teacher.

This book is dedicated to all those teachers in classrooms throughout America who teach with a beginners mind, be it their first or their thirty-first year with students.

Who dare to teach must never cease to learn.

John Cotton Dana

Copyright 2003 by Corwin Press.

First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2016

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tracey E. Miller

Print ISBN: 978-1-6345-0720-2

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-6345-0721-9

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface

W ho am I to write a book on teaching? Ive won no teaching awards, I dont have an Ed.D., and Ive conducted no research. But I did teach for twenty-seven years, and I tried to correct my mistakes so that I could be a better teacher each year. I was still observing other teachers, reading more books on teaching, inventing new materials, and trying new methods in my final year of teaching. The experience made me laugh, and it made me cry. It was fun, hard work, and it was always new.

I quit twice in my career. Once from burnout, and once to make more money working for a Silicon Valley start-up. Each time, I just walked away, leaving animals, plants, posters, and other materials. Each time, I returned to teach in another place.

What brought me back were the kids. Teaching software engineers paid much better, but the excitementseeing a kids eyes light up when he solved a problem or saw a starfish for the first timewasnt there.

Many times in my twenty-seven years in the classroom I wished Id had a book I could to turn to for basic teaching wisdom and inspiration. Maybe I can tell you everything that I know about teaching in one paragraph and you then wont need to buy this book. Here it is:

Humans, especially young ones, are curious. We want to know: We cant help it. Humans love the unexpected, love seeing things in a new context. We are visual creatures, and trying to teach us anything is always easier with visual stimulation. We learn best when those who teach us have genuine concern for us, and we can tell that they do. If those who teach us are fair yet firm, we trust them. When they can teach us with humor and share their own joy in learning, we learn easily.

I believe that Teaching Is an Art is the book I wished Id had. In it, I try to tell it like it isthe good and the bad. I discuss subjects that dont come up in education courses: topics such as How to Become Hated, Making Your-self Accessible, Power in the Classroom, Pizzazz, Substitute Teachers, Lies, Learning Is a Process, and Timing. I offer practical suggestions that took me years to learn, and I recommend books, games, and specific lesson plans that are winners. Many teaching materials dont singthey dont even hum. They are dull, dolled up with cutesy cartoons or graphics, and aimed at a fictional Dick and Jane rather than a real-life Carlos and Ngoc. I want this to be a book that new teachers can turn to for practical answers and that veteran teachers can browse through to remind themselves why they stay in this maddening and wonderful profession.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No book is written by one person. Smart friends read the first draft, give advice, laugh in the wrong place, ask questions, and point the book in the right direction. These friends helped write the book, and I want to thank them: Laura Compton, Jan Huls, Linda Pearson, Dr. Frank Siccone, Paula Symonds, and especially Gary Tsuruda.

I want also to thank two teachers, Chet Skibinski and Chuck Harle, for allowing me to interview them about current practices and circumstances in Portland-area schools, as well as about their own experiences o ver man y years in the class r oom.

But how do you thank the most important person who helped write this book? My wife was a language arts and social studies teacher for twenty-four years. She was the editor of this book every step of the way. Joyce Spreyer is actually the coauthor of Teaching Is an Art , but she will not permit her name to appear anywhere but here.

So, thank you, Joyce Spreyer. Your help was invaluable, and this acknowledgment is too little.

The Publisher would also like to acknowledge the following reviewers:

Sandra Hildreth

Art Methods Instructor

Education Department

St. Lawrence University

Canton, NY

Karen Kusiak

Assistant Professor

Education and Human Development Department

Colby College

Waterville, ME

JoAnn Hohenbrink

Associate Professor

Education Division

Ohio Dominican College

Columbus, OH

Michelle Kocar

Student Services

Supervisor

North Ridgeville City Schools

North Ridgeville, OH

Rebecca McMahon Giles

Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction

College of Education

University of South Alabama

Mobile, AL

About the Author

L eon Spreyer was born in 1937 in Bakersfield, California. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and graduated from San Jose State University in 1960. He taught for twenty-seven years in several Bay Area schools, retiring in 1993. In the 1980s, he worked in Silicon Valley for two years as a product educator for a computer software company.

Leon designed and produced the game Evolution, which is sold by Carolina Biological Supply and Van Waters Rogers. He has written a book for math teachers, Math Hooks, which is published by Carolina Mathematics. He is currently writing Number Bugs, a mathematical fantasy for children.

After retiring, Leon and his wife moved to a suburb of Portland, Oregon. He has two daughters and a grandson. He can be contacted at .

The Art of Teaching

I love to teach as a painter loves to paint, as a musician loves to play, as a singer loves to sing, as a strong man rejoices to run a race. Teaching is an artan art so great and so difficult to master that a man or woman can spend a long life at it, without realizing much more than his limitations and mistakes and his distances from the ideal.

William Phelps

T eaching is many things, but most of all its an art. I taught for twenty-seven years, and when I stopped, I knew there was still much left for me to learn. As with all art, mastery is never complete. Skills learned become stepping stones to reach farther, to understand more, to see where you could not see before.