Classroom Oikos: Information, Imitation, Innovation: Becoming a Teacher

One of the best things about the teacher training I had was that it followed the discipleship triangle of information---> imitation---> innovation. Discipleship is kind of like apprenticeship, learning to become like someone, do what they do. This is how I became a teacher.

Discipleship Triangle

Information

In college, I was majoring in elementary education. I had professors at Valparaiso University that introduced me to guided reading, professors at Joliet Junior College who taught me the psychology of children and professors at University of Missouri- St. Louis that introduced me to teaching philosophies. Then I went to graduate school and had professors that taught me behavior management strategies, strategies for working with students with special needs and strategies for working in urban environments. I was chock-full of helpful teacher information and ready for the next stage. 

Imitation 

In my last year of graduate school, I had a practicum where I worked with small groups of gifted fifth graders on math and a small group of second graders on reading. I observed their teachers to learn how they put strategies into practice. Then I had my student teaching. I watched a second grade teacher in her room, watched her pacing, her questioning and her organization. Then I took over her class to do what she did. After that, they said I was ready for the final stage. 

Innovation

I was given my own first grade classroom starting Fall 2013. I used my knowledge of guided reading, behavior management, and working in an urban environment coupled with my experience of building student-teacher relationships, lesson pacing and organization to start teaching the group of 18 six-year-olds. I had many questions and several mentors. I was able to go to them to get information or watch them to imitate them with things I had never done until I could start doing it in a way that fit me and my classroom. 

Doing missional community requires the same three stages. Get information about missional communities, what they are, how to do them and where to start them. At this point there are two common mistakes. One is that in our information-saturated world, it is easy to stay in the "information" stage. There are many people in the education that have a lot of information about classrooms that make decisions about how classrooms should be run without any of the imitation or innovation and that cause a lot of damage for the classrooms they oversee. Information is important. However, it is impossible to make effective changes with just knowing a lot about something. 

The other mistake we tend to make is to go from information to innovation without doing any imitating. Any teacher that I know that didn't do student teaching, did not survive a year. These are intelligent, strong, loving people that did not have the proper support to succeed. No one showed them how to do it. With that said, find someone who is doing missional communities and follow them. We do coaching huddles, partake in a learning community and are a part of TOM to network with other people "doing the stuff". Set yourself up for success. 

Once you've read about and followed people doing missional communities, then you're ready to innovate. Find new ways to integrate yourself into the community you are reaching out to. Take the things you learned from the people you read and people you followed and make them work in your context. 

So where do you find yourself? Do you need information? What topic can we help you find information on? Do you need people to imitate? What is your goal and how can we help you connect to people doing that? Do you need to innovate? Tell us your thoughts below.