When reading the November/December 2022 issue of Modern English Teacher, I came across an article by Vita Korgen in which she talks about how she was reading a book and began to think about how to apply what she was reading to teaching English. Recently I started reading Donald J. Robertson’s excellent ‘How to think like a Roman Emperor – The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius’ and began thinking about how Stoicism could be applied to teaching English. The following is just a few musings on integrating philosophy into teaching.
Know thyself
Before getting into Stoicism, though, I feel there’s a more general philosophical rule that should be examined: Know Thyself.
The famous inscription from the Delphic Oracle has permeated our modern culture, but I don’t think everyone lives by it. Galen observed that “only the very wise among us ever know themselves and the rest of us fall into the trap of supposing either that we are completely without fault or that our flaws are few, mild and infrequent.”
It has been suggested that accurate self-perception is vital to self-development. Limiting the scope of our inquiry just to teaching English, I believe that knowing ourselves could relate to a teacher knowing, on a theoretical side, what their teaching philosophy and approach is, and more concretely, what your strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to teaching. For example, do you have strong time management skills but weak class management skills? It would help if you knew this about yourself when preparing your actions/reactions to your learners. Getting to know yourself can only be done through self-reflection, which I’ll talk about later in this article.
Stoicism’s most basic rule
Stoicism’s basic rule is that a person should know what they can change and what they can’t change and learn to tell the difference.
This rule is especially applicable to English teachers in China who are often faced with circumstances that are not ideal for teaching but that they can’t change. For example, you generally can’t change the classroom given to you, the number of students in your class or often the syllabus you have to follow, so what can you change? The classroom setup, the activities in your lesson, or your teaching approach. This is a non-exhaustive list, but the part that a teacher must reflect on is learning to know the difference between what they can and can’t change and then focusing on what they can change.
View things objectively
Stoicism suggests that how we talk and think about events involves making value judgments that shape our feelings. Wisdom thus comes from grasping things objectively. If a teacher makes a judgment call about a student, thinking, “that student is a terrible student,” every thought they have in the future about that student will be affected by the judgment call they made that the student is terrible. Instead, Stoicism suggests that you simply state facts. If a student fails an exercise, don’t label them bad or good students or extrapolate a myriad of reasons why the student failed, simply say, the student couldn’t complete the exercise and go on from there. After a class that didn’t go well, a teacher doesn’t have to think, “I’m a horrible teacher,” just “that class didn’t go as planned,” and move on to the next class.
A teacher’s meditation cycle
Marcus Aurelius suggests a daily meditation cycle. In the morning, you rehearse the key events you will be doing that day. During the day, you keep track of your behavior and habits. Finally, in the evening, you review what you did well, what you did poorly, and what you could do the next day differently.
This cycle seems quite similar to reflective practice and Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. As a reflective practitioner, a teacher plans their classes, keeps track of the data during class, and then reflects on the data after the class, integrating any improvements into their planning for their next class.
These are just a few thoughts on integrating Stoicism into teaching, but I hope it piqued your interest in discovering Stoicism for yourself and how you can apply it to your teaching or to your life in general.