"A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, rather, he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn't think, he acts: and it's nothing he can explain, he just feels how things should go."
- Vincent Van Gogh -
It takes a fine hand to gather thousands of different threads and weave them in an intricate tapestry that somehow becomes a piece of art for many to admire. Some who view it will be struck by the use of color, others will marvel at the detail of the image and still others may simply appreciate the whole picture.
This too, is our job as educators, to make connections of thousands of ideas into a lesson that may be understood by a variety of individuals. Just as the tapestry will be appreciated on many different levels the students of each classroom will understand, appreciate and utilize the knowledge in a wide variety of ways.
It is our job as an educator to design lessons that will somehow strike a chord with as many students as possible within their classroom. As a teacher we must weave ourselves, our subject and our students in the fabric of learning.
Our capabilities are maximized as we create great understanding through connectedness. We must be able to take grand complex ideas and bring focus to the threads that we weave together within the image. But, we are also capable of taking what may seem like piles of unrelated ideas and manipulate them in to a single intricate coherent thought.
As educators we must utilize a variety of tools in order to complete this process: Socratic dialogues, collaborative problem solving, lecture, multi-media and technology. However, the connectedness does not flow out of these methods but instead it flows out of the zeal, passion and heart that we as educators demonstrate in the process.
Good teachers become part of the fabric of the community of learning, joining both students and subject into a culture of learning within their classroom.
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