Beacon alumnus and technology administrator extrodinaire Danny Markovic has entered the world of blogging. Welcome Danny!

There are times when I am a complete and total sap. I was just watching the West Wing marathon on Bravo. It was the episode with the sub-plot where Donna Moss tries to convince Josh to get the President to sign a proclamation for her retiring high school English teacher. Josh spends much of the episode explaining what a ridiculous idea that is… but, interestingly, there’s this very cool moment where both Donna and Josh mention the teacher who was most influential in their lives.

(or why pedagogy matters…)

This was my last week of classes for grad school. My experiences in my classes have been about as powerful of a contrast as you can imagine. In one class, the professor created the most amazing atmosphere I’ve experienced. It was part personality, part experience, and also part pedagogy. Student ideas were valued. He taught about an ethic of care, and he modeled that for us powerfully. He taught about transparency in the classroom, and his teaching was. He talked about teaching as transforming, and he made us believe that our thoughts could change him in the same ways that his transformed us.

When he finished his closing remarks, the class gave him a standing ovation. We didn’t want the class to end. The most distracting thing about the class for me was that, as the class went on, I found myself getting meta in the class. How was it that he was creating that environment? How did he make a bunch of cynical grad students try to out-do each other in a friendly competition to create something wonderful?