Tact, for the Researcher and the Educator [Symposium Study I Part V]
  Dan Lukiv

Do you sometimes grow too concerned to get the job done? The bell will ring soon, and you need the students to complete that worksheet before that happens, but someone asks a question that, if you answer it fully, will rob you of time needed to explain to the whole class the last section of the worksheet, which is somewhat confusing.

This article approaches the important subject of tact with a humorous twist, which is, according to Webster's: "A quick or intuitive appreciation of what is fit, proper, or right; fine or ready mental discernment shown in saying or doing the proper thing, or especially in avoiding what would offend or disturb" (Tact, p. 982). Therefore, a tactful person has "the ability to appreciate the delicacy of a situation and to do or say the kindest or most fitting thing" (as quoted in Learning the Art, 2003, p. 29). You might see logic in the word tact once referring "to touch. Just as sensitive fingers can perceive if something is sticky, soft, polished, hot, or hairy, so a tactful person can sense the feelings of other people and can discern how his words or actions affect them" (p. 29). Clearly, the tactful person feels a "genuine desire to avoid hurting others" (p. 29).    full text >>>

At Telemachus' Gate
  Andrew Foran

I tried hard to be a representative of the exemplar teaching I experienced as a student and a beginning teacher instructed in the proper ways of classroom methodology. I wanted to impart knowledge, but how? I spent many fraudulent classes pretending I was a teacher who understood my "place" within the classroom. I dressed the part, acted the part, and continued to plan my lessons to fulfill the part. On the surface I appeared to all a teacher, but on the inside, was I experiencing the absence of a lack of quality teaching--the passion, the classroom connection, the sense of community within the school? There were many instances when I did not want to turn to face my own class. These were the moments when my students were lost to me, and I was disconnected from the curriculum-as-lived (Aokie, 1990). I can still feel and hear the thud of my hands clapping together, trying to rid the evidence of yellow-chalk dust from my skin. In my mind I can see the dust drift up before my eyes clouding the social reality of myself as a teacher. In reliving that lesson, I still taste a strange residue at the back of my mouth, the pastiness of chalk dust! Mostly, I remember how strange, alien, foreign that old yellow chalk felt in my hands.

A deliberate reform in teaching practice has its origins in that old yellow chalk. "Strangeness" still presents itself when my reflections challenge the assumptions of my everyday practice and belief in teaching. Many have experienced strange sensations in a moment when "something just does not feel quite right." This is described as a bodily experience, a pathic connection, or even an emotional awareness that is elusive leaving us inarticulate. From that experience with the yellow chalk, my teaching became grounded in a "doing," "active," and "non-traditional" experiential approach of outdoor education.   full text >>>

Atheism
  Marvin Gettleman

Sunlight bathed the higher reaches of the San Isidro Cathedral. The lower level where Arnold Hartman had entered from the makeshift refugee shelter out in the cloister remained dark. The young north American graduate student waited until his eyes adjusted to the dim light of smoking candles that fell on the shawls of a few kneeling women. He had been spending the past week interviewing peasants who had fled the provinces where guerrillas were battling the country's regular army and who found refuge there.
        Arnold reviewed what he knew about Father Gustavo Sorinta, administrator of the refugio who had formally approved the interviewing, but had until now been to busy himself to meet with the student. Briefed by local U.S. officials who told him that Sorinta was "a notorious rebel sympathizer," Hartman thought: Well, his position is pretty clear from his writings. It makes no difference to me what his politics are. I need to interview him, and whether I agree or disagree with his view has nothing to do with my thesis project. Armed by this mantra of academic neutrality, Arnold cultivated an attitude of skepticism toward both sides in the civil war then raging in the small Central American country.    full text >>>