Try to listen carefully to children. I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children’s narratives; but I have almost always found that children are a great deal more reliable in telling what really goes on in public school than many of the adult experts who develop policies that shape their destinies. Unlike these powerful grown-ups, children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure. They may err sometimes about the minuscule particulars but on the big things children rarely have reason to mislead us. They are in this respect, pure witnesses, and we will hear their testimony in these pages. (Kozol, 2005, p. 12)
Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Crown.
Seymour Papert reminds us of how important it is to be continually learning alongside my students in authentic teaching experiences.
On the importance of teacherslearning alongside students
"What we need is kinds of activity in the classroom where the teacher is learning at the same time as the kids and with the kids. Unless you do that, you'll never get out of the bind of what the teachers can do is limited by what they were taught to do when they went to school. And I think that's possible, and it's a different concept of what kind of educational kind of materials and activities should go into the school. It's in line with what I was saying before -- that we mustn't think only of, "Is this to be judged by what the kids learn?" We've got to say, "Judge it by what the whole system learns, (and) that includes the teacher." The teacher's got to be learning at the same time. And then with this robotics stuff, it's an example because ... every situation is unique. It's never been there before. And that's very different from the classroom situation where we're teaching math fractions. We've been there before. The teacher is not learning anything because the teacher knows that already. And this is a very bad situation for learning.
Again, one of my favorite little analogies: If I wanted to become a better carpenter, I'd go find a good carpenter, and I'll work with this carpenter on doing carpentry or making things. And that's how I'll get to be a better carpenter. So if I want to be a better learner, I'll go find somebody who's a good learner and with this person do some learning. But this is the opposite of what we do in our schools. We don't allow the teacher to do any learning. We don't allow the kids to have the experience of learning with the teacher because that's incompatible with the concept of the curriculum where what is being taught is what's already known." Seymour Papert onProject-Based Learning