subtext

Since September I have had a doctoral canidate in my classroom doing research on writing conferences. I was leery of doing this at first, as well as eager for her to come into my room. I like the comfort level I have in my classroom with my students. I can be who I am as a teacher with relative ease after the first week of school. The students at first are entertained by my presence then settle into the routine of the class and become a part of my jabber on writing and literature. When others come into the room, I am disturbed by the presence of someone else who is not my target audience, but yet an audience nonetheless. I trusted Anna because she had been in a number of my doc classes when I was still a part of the program. I had seen her mind work, so she was not a complete unknown.
Without being disengenous I have not ever been sure what it is I do in my class, what impact/change I have on my students. From a class on Curriculum Theory with Lisa Cary, the statement from Dr. Cary, “It is not the class, but the teacher” has stayed with me. It is not the dangerous, narcisistic draw of the statement, but the implication that there is more going on in the classroom than the stated objectives or TEKS of the course. The curriculum is always broader than the course outline, and the manifestation of the unstated curriculum occurs in the presence of the teacher: what he or she brings to the class with her existance/experience as a human being in relation to the academic subject being taught.