September 2005

Perspectives column by Sharon Bass: Sliding along the continuum

Robert Noyd’s article, “Applying Arictotle’s golden mean to the classroom: Balancing underteaching and overteaching,” addressed the tricky nature we all face in our teaching: finding the right balance. He used the language and rhetorical vision of Aristotle to arrive at finding the golden mean and described navigating the geography of learning based on five criteria: knowing the students, determining the right amount of support, timing the help, having the right reason, and using the right delivery.

After reading his article, it struck me that as teachers we always live somewhere on the continuum Noyd describes, bounded on one end by underteaching and on the other by overteaching. In thinking about my life on this continuum, I began to see myself more as a slide, like one of those electrical devices controlling a rheostat. It strikes me as a good place to be: just sliding along the continuum, sometimes putting more light on a subject and  sometimes less. It all depends on the student, the needed amount of light or information or help, the time and the purpose.

Classroom conditions change and are fraught with variables. As a beginning teacher I was painfully aware of the variables and my answer was to gain as much control as possible. With more experience I see that control is neither possible nor desirable for the kind of learning I want for myself and for my students.