"There’s a difference between knowing and understanding. I know about quantum physics, but I’m fairly certain that I don’t understand it. It’s my belief that an “educated” person has developed the ability to learn curiously, objectively, independently, logically, and empirically, placing great emphasis on experience and the utility of foundational principles to build understanding. Cultivating the ability to understand, not to know, is a teacher’s primary mission; educators cannot expect anyone to memorise every word and memorise the answer to every math problem that’s extremely illogical and unrealistic. Thus, I strongly encourage the “understanding” of knowledge, including the mastery of basic arithmetic and grammar, as the golden keys to education.

I have a Political Science degree from Washburn University. As a composition and literature teacher for the past eight years, I have chosen to elicit discovery as a deconstructionist. A good teacher facilitates experience but elicits discovery; however, discovery requires acknowledgment, a recognition of something familiar in something unfamiliar. Inevitably, we use what we know to discern what we don't. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius communicated this by suggesting the question: "What is a thing in and of itself?" In other words, by focusing on, observing, and substantially questioning what we know, or think we know, we find "facts" that can be further explored to deepen our understanding of the unknown. It seems to me that other attempts at discernment may not only be illogical and non-empirical but also impossible. The beauty of education lays in the “known unknown” becoming a “known known.” There is great joy in this transition, perhaps one of the greatest joys in life, but the transition is bound and limited by experience. Essentially then, in my approach to education, for both myself and my students, I also encourage the process of guided discovery to unravel hidden meanings and to arrive at deeper understandings. Sometimes this involves the reinforcement" less...