by Tyson Seburn

Anthony Gaughan wonders how often we are applauded as though our teaching is perfect. Regarding the context of his teacher training experience in Germany, he notes how much his practice had become a finely tuned machine. In this apparent perfection, the human “messiness” of lessons was left behind. He argues that this perfection leads to a constant amount of stress, and once noticed, he asks what kind of teacher does he want his trainees to be?IMG_0649

He unplugged from the perfection of the training plan, by asking trainees to determine what they wanted to teach, how they wanted to teach, and what they wanted to learn. From here, training became fun again after working with their individual ideas, rather than training them to do it the ‘right’ way.

But then his co-tutor left and also the perfect relationship they had developed in this training and Anthony needed to adjust to this new system and more questions arose:

For those of you joining Anthony’s Open Space this afternoon, the questions to think about are:

  • How do you change radically the nature of the work you do when you have very tight policy or institutional restraints?
  • How do you find ways of adjusting to radically changed circumstances in positive ways that lead to moving forward not dwelling on the past?