Comments

Laurie,

   I listened to the youtube clip and it's really interesting stuff!  Is there any way to get the rest of the presentation? maybe i need to buy his book. :) (I looked up your previous blogs on Robert Duke's other lectures.)

Hi Margaret,

No, I don't have the entire lecture on video; you'd have to come hear him speak live some time! But I added one more little snippet at the bottom, just for you. :)

Thank you, Laurie! That's a generous snippet. I appreciate it.  --Margaret

This is really great.

And I like how he differentiates between when you should push a student and when it's mean to do so. 

But I wish he could expand a bit more on how he knows when a student is capable of something and when not.  There's so much confusion around that, in my opinion, because students these days are never allowed to say, or even to think, that they're not capable of something.

Laurie, thanks so much for posting this.  I think that Duke has reached down into the heart of teaching.  "More often, a student – of any discipline – receives information from a teacher, writes it down and spits it back" and "Unfortunately, the educational process often beats this [the joy of learning] out of people."  My father used to say those two things that Duke said, and his approach to learning was very similar to Duke's over all.  My father was my first and best teacher.  He didn't just teach me things.  he taught me to love learning.  I know some of the things he did in teaching, but not all of them.  He is still my role model as a teacher, although he passed away years ago.

"The leader of the band is tired, and his eyes are growing old

But his blood runs through my instrument, his song is in my soul.

My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man

I'm just a living legacy of the leader of the band."

by Dan Fogelberg

You can hear him sing this on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3GHCy49Dw

Warning: This song is very emotionally charged.