“First, Do Not Prevent Learning”
By Chris Thinnes.
(A Review of Stuart Grauer’s Fearless Teaching, forthcoming Jan. 2016 from AERO)
Is the teacher’s fundamental allegiance tothe school system…or to their students?Time after time in my work as a teacher,I’ve witnessed the sheer delight studentsand teachers take in doing nothing morethan circling around, eyes drawn together,and discovering one another. Could thisbe what the revolution looks like?– Stuart Grauer
“The progressive educator,” Paulo Freire told us, “must always be moving out on his or her own, continually reinventing me and reinventing what it means to be democratic in his or her own specific cultural and historical context” (1997, cited in Darder, 2002, p. 5). Stuart Grauer, founder of The Grauer School and The Small Schools Coalition, honors this call to action in Fearless Teaching (2016, forthcoming from AERO), and leverages his experiences and insights from an admittedly privileged positionality to offer a unique lens on cultures of teaching and learning to which some of us may not have access, and in which some of us may fear to tread — partnering with Californian students on partnership excursions to small schools in Cuba, Korea, Navajo territory, Palestine, Panama, Tanzania, and many other places around the world.
At first Grauer’s strategy is disarming and discomforting, as it moves well past the conventional frames of “First, Do Not Prevent Learning” - Living in Dialogue:
