Teacher As Bricoleur

By Author: Alex Armas
Total Articles: 74
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In "The Lost Language of Cranes: Windows and Mirrors in the Regressive Phase of Currere," Pinar (1994) tells us that the regressive phase of currere is not about wandering around in one's own house of mirrors, Narcissus-like, but remembering that the language we speak now derives from what and whom we saw through our windows as infants, and children, and young adults.

The idea that one's autobiography matters and how it matters is essential here. Mr. Krantzman's reactions and responses to his students and their reactions and responses to him, one another, and the texts they compose are prompted at all levels of consciousness by who they are, are not, and have been. The presence of autobiographical sensibilities as a signature in the design of classroom Replica Cartier Santos instruction and curriculum is no less a need for Mr. Krantzman and his eighth graders than it is for other teachers and students. In contrast to the image of teacher as an embodied self, I think of Sumara's (1996) characterization of teacher as tour guide. He writes, ...
... "Curriculum is a normalizing experience.... Teachers become tour guides, showing students which sites must be noticed.... As a daily performance, teaching becomes a pointing ritual that seldom pierces underneath the skin of the everyday".

The bricoleur's work depends on his or her capacity to pierce "underneath the skin of the everyday" (Sumara, 1996, p. 233). Mr. Krantzman says that he begins the school year wanting students to hear the poetic in common speech and that his intentions evolve alongside his understanding of the work. The teacher, like the bricoleur, understands that nothing remains fixed and, as such, makes use of materials at hand, often reinventing based on evolving intentions. This capacity to walk the uncharted path is important. As Sofia noted in "Vacant Skies," clouds wander. Morson (1994) in Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time explains that creativity and ethics are lessened when living is understood as "the mere unfolding of an already completely determined sequence of steps to a ready-made conclusion". I think about Morson's assertion in relationship to the negotiated texts that Mr. Krantzman and his students determine and consider how occasioning learning is quite different than sequencing Tag Heuer Replica Watches activities for learners to do to get to some prescribed meaning. If meaning is fully prescribed, one need not attend.

To create requires the willingness to enter unknown territories, often making use of what is at hand. The creative process, Morson (1994) contends, "typically traces not a straight line to a goal but a series of false leads, missed opportunities, new possibilities, improvisations, visions, and revisions. It is constituted by an intention that evolves over time". It is this multiplicity of intention evolving over time that most characterizes Mr. Krantzman's instruction and that is central to why students come to deeply love learning and be academically successful. Mr. Krantzman's students almost always pass the state's literacy assessment, with close to 40% of the students performing at an advanced level.

At a time when matching instructional practices to external standards is more the norm, making do may feel like an odd fit. Yet Mr. Krantzman's instruction might well be understood as bricolage in that he constructs opportunities that open spaces of possibility, not destined certainties. He understands the school year, not as a collection of units of study ready to be enacted, but rather as learning that is collaged and juxtaposed and made with students along the way. As such, he reuses strategies and texts, changing intention to match perceived need, pulling in materials he finds at hand as needed.