Teaching Tibet: Chapter IV

Index

 * CHAPTER IV: RETROSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTIVE	102
 * DISPARITIES AND TENSIONS	103
 * FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH TEACHING	114
 * CONCERNS FOR THE FUTURE	117

Chapter IV: Retrospective and Prospective
This project has moved through several different phases of development: Chapter I outlined the cognitive science and cognitive psychology elements that informed the three teaching styles I identified as methods to successfully address the educational goals for “Introduction to Tibet.” It also delineated these pedagogical objectives specifically, based on a revised edition of Bloom’s Taxonomy for Educational Objectives. Chapter II focused on the initial curriculum I designed in January of 2008, and Chapter III presented the changes that occurred as a result of the actual execution of this curriculum in my course, “Introduction to Tibet: History, Religion, Culture and Politics.” This chapter will focus on analyzing my project from a broader perspective, and will address some of the larger, more conflicted aspects associated with teaching Tibet, and also with teaching in general. This chapter will provide my project with closure, but it is not my intention to wrap things up in a nice simple package; in this final portion, I will complicate and problematize both pedagogy and Tibetology, highlighting some of the perennial tensions that I have only begun to explore. In this way, I hope to close the analysis of this process of teaching by opening new arenas for further improvement and future consideration. Specifically, I intend to address three central topics of concern. First, I will be selecting five disparities between my initial ideals and goals for the course and the actual result, and how these divergences highlight some of the continuing and recurring issues in pedagogical theory and practice, as well as those tensions that are specific to teaching a class on Tibet. I employ terms such as “disparity” “disconnect” “incongruence” and “inconsistency” in this context without placing any kind of value judgment – I use them as value neutral words. I use them only to denote where some aspect of my initial theoretical outlook was not fulfilled in the practical realm. Second, I will speak about the class with a further degree of analysis. In the previous chapter, I analyzed the element of change and the role it has played in this context, but in this second section of chapter IV, I will analyze the elements of the class which I felt were positive and strong, while also taking note of those areas that require improvement. Third, more of these improvements will be discussed when I will close this final chapter with a look toward my own future as a teacher – specifically, the concerns that I have as a hopeful educator looking to enter into a challenging profession, and how I can change my teaching theory and practice in the future.

Disparities and Tensions
Although I analyzed some of the changes that occurred between my initial outlook (as seen in Chapter II) and the evolution of the course (as seen in Chapter III), I hope to expose five specific disparities and further complicate and emphasize the gap between theory and practice as a way to highlight the continuing and recurring tensions that exist with regard to pedagogical theory and practice, generally, as well as to teaching a class about Tibet, specifically. What is of primary concern here is that I am presenting problems as opposed to solutions. But to what end? In noting the importance of these tensions, I am attempting, at the very least, to address these issues and be aware of them. In terms of pedagogical theory and practice, I have come upon three unexpected changes within the course that present such tension. One such disparity revolved around a struggle I encountered with student participation. In the syllabus for the course, I asked all students to write four free-write reactions to the readings, each reaction only being one or two pages long. I tried to make this assignment as free and open to approach as possible, leaving the content of their reactions up to them. I made this request thinking the relaxed expectations for the reactions would be reasonable given the fact that five of the six students participating in “Introduction to Tibet” would not receive college credit for enrolling in the course. The reality was that only two of the six participants turned in reactions faithfully. Other students turned in one or two reactions, but this aspect of the class did not unfold as I envisioned. I noted this incongruence with some frustration in my notes and reactions. For me, this particular disconnect highlights issues of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Students who will not get credit for the course, but who continue to attend the class are obviously driven by a great deal of intrinsic motivation – they are compelled from within to attend my class. If “Introduction to Tibet” was not worth their time, they could vanish from the course and there would be no repercussions to the status of their transcript, and yet, I worked continually with the same six students. However, the fact that there is little extrinsic motivation present (for example, getting college credit) is perhaps evidenced in the lack of student written work. The lack of this kind of motivation does not wholly account for a dearth of student work, however I feel that the absence of such an external weight (i.e. receiving an evaluation) was partially (though not totally) responsible for this deficiency. They may have considered the work unimportant or perhaps it persistently escaped their memory. In reality, there are a myriad of possible conclusions, however I feel this explanation is pertinent to some degree. To an extent, I feel this extrinsic motivation can be a compelling factor in a classroom, and to a degree, it can be very useful. Making my course worth college credit could be an effective element to ensure students take it seriously, and do serious work for it. This also speaks to the strange in-between position I inhabit as a student and also a teacher, and is very similar to my prior experiences as a Teaching Assistant. It is strange precisely because I straddle the boundary between these two levels of classroom relationships. I also wonder how my actions in the classroom may have contributed to this. At the beginning of the course, I emphasized that I am a “master learner” as opposed to a “master teacher” (an idea I will return to shortly), and I have to consider that perhaps my own hope to devalue my own position of authority had something to do with the fact that so few students felt it was necessary to turn in the written response work. The second disparity I have encountered over the course of this project revolves around the use of lecture in my classes. As I mentioned in chapter II, I planned to use lecture heavily, because it was the teaching method with which I was most familiar. However, I came to understand that using such a method to an extreme can be dry and boring, and does not touch on many of the concerns and interests of the students. If I relegate the class discourse only to my own ideas about a given topic, then it does not matter how pertinent these ideas are – they may not be relevant to the students. This very clearly exposed a tension between authority and flexibility in the classroom. Insofar as I am the instructor and the architect of the course’s content, the students obviously looked to me for some degree of leadership or guidance, and yet at the same time it is important to balance my own general goals and objectives with those of the students. There are aspects that I feel are critical to acknowledge within an introductory study of Tibet, but this is coming from my own conceptions of the essential. What is truly important in this case is an appreciation of the subjectivity that each participant brings into the learning environment – both students and professor. Getting to know your students, where they are coming from, some of their strengths and potential areas for improvement can be useful tools for instruction. This also brought to my attention tensions regarding relinquishing and asserting control over class discourse specifically. Even when I, as the instructor, let go and allowed the students to guide and decide on the direction and scope of the discussion, I was still asserting some level of control over the environment by way of allowing and encouraging such student control. For example, when I relied predominantly on student questions to support our discussion of Tibetan governance from 1913-1950 (IT #10), I was making a conscious effort and decision to encourage and focus on the students’ perspective. The balance between authority and autonomy is a delicate one. Each instructor, as much as each student, will have different ideas about what level of each are appropriate, dependent on varying goals for the class. This is partially what I hoped to convey in the second sentence of my introduction: that there is no single way to teach; no two people will approach teaching from the same direction. This disparity concerning lecture and authority points to a larger change in regards to the way I employed all three teaching styles; none of them unfolded precisely as I outlined in the theoretical sections of Chapter I and II. The three teaching strategies I outlined and have continually revisited (Socratic, group interaction and lecture) have served as a common thread running through the entirety of this project. We have seen how they have been defined, employed in the classroom and reinterpreted as a result of this practical teaching experience. It has been a remarkable experience seeing how my understanding of these practices in theory has differed from my understanding informed by practice. Initially, I envisioned these practices as distinctly different – that the Socratic method, lecture and group interaction were all somehow different and that I would utilize each of them individually over the course of a class period. Alternately, I envisioned some classes where I would employ one teaching method for the whole course – for example, IT #5 was a lecture-based exploration of the Buddhist religious history of Tibet. By the end of the course, what I came to understand was that during one class session, I could employ multiple techniques seamlessly in quick succession. For example, between the two classes we spent focusing on Chinese-Tibetan relations (IT #11 and #12), I utilized group activity, class-wide discussion, lecture for the purposes of framing, and task-based instruction interwoven into a rich and provocative exploration. This revealed the problematic nature of using only three teaching methods, and it is not surprising that I extended my teaching beyond these three, as I noted at the end of chapter III. I need to use multiple methods for multiple different contexts. Using different teaching styles in different situations makes for an adaptive practice. Eventually, I see each one of these methods being synthesized into a broader “teaching style” that each teacher develops individually. To use an analogy, each teacher puts different “tools” in their “toolbox,” but when they close the top, it is still a toolbox. Much in the same way, a teacher will integrate different methods with one another. The methods are useful for different reasons, but they can all be combined to form a teacher’s style. For this reason, it is vital to employ not just three teaching methods, but rather a multitude. To continue the analogy, when confronted with a challenge, I will need more than just a screwdriver, a wrench and pliers; many tools are useful for different situations. Knowing which tools are useful and effective for certain situations is an aspect of pedagogical theory and practice that I will have to continually reevaluate as I continue to grow and think as a teacher. This presents a very real challenge for my attempts at constantly reflecting on my practice, because it requires answering a very difficult and personal question. What defines “effective” teaching? I have avoided this question until now, because I have not felt qualified to speak on it with any real insight. The term ‘effective’ is a value judgment, and thus highly subjective. I do not suggest there is one set method for effective teaching, but I will attempt to provide a partial explanation of how I have come to understand this term, through the context of my class. Though I still have a massive amount to learn, both in the fields of Tibetology and education, I feel I can say – informed strictly by my own studies and experiences as a student and a teacher – that teaching practices must address many different goals within the classroom in order to be called “effective”. For the purposes of “Introduction to Tibet”, I suggest that the teaching practices that fulfilled the objectives I explored in Chapters I and II, as well as student goals (and did so in a balanced way) were effective. This qualifier implies assumptions, notably that instructional methods are somehow inherently useful, and that it is simply a matter of honing my ability to competently execute these practices, and as I will explain momentarily, I do not necessarily suggest this. It also assumes that the student goals and those of my own will not be in conflict and that together we can arrive at definitions of “balance” and “effective”, while also maintaining individual definitions as well. I can – and should – consult multiple instructional methods. However, when a given method is employed, it takes on new meanings, new contexts, roles and uses, which are all informed by my own understandings around teaching, and the insights I gained from student feedback. In this sense, it is not simply a matter of accessing some monolithic teaching practice – it is my capacity to remake it and apply it in different contexts. I do not understand these as static practices, but rather evolving ones. Balance is a critical aspect of my classroom, and I strove to keep this in mind at all times during the class. Even here, it is critical to keep in mind that this notion of balance is also a subjective one. Reflecting on the course, I have provided a very basic, partial and subjective definition of effective teaching – I do not suggest it is absolute, but it is a valuable and seemingly common sense insight I have reached through theory and practice. I often try to reflect on what accounted for my original rigidity in regards to the three teaching styles. Much of this has to do with the fact that before I began teaching this course, my understandings of these methods was strictly theoretical. In this sense, I needed to actually begin teaching before I could change my thinking about these strategies. However, even when I began teaching, it was not until the fourth or fifth week of classes in IT #9 that I began to relax and reconfigure my attitude towards these practices. Instead of defining the class by the teaching practices, I began to utilize the teaching practices in response to the direction of the dialogue in the class. For example, when one student mentioned “Buddha factories,” I took this as an opportunity to employ the Socratic method and explore that definition. Furthermore, it was only during the last two sessions of the course that I honestly felt I was beginning to enact some of these changes in the actual curriculum. During these classes, I added activities and assignments to lesson plans, made room for more student input, and added homework that ventured outside of the readings I assigned through asking students to bring in articles from the current news on Tibet. If I was slow to implement these changes, the fact that they were made at all gives me hope. Moving on to speak about some of the challenges I encountered when teaching about Tibet specifically, I experienced two significant conflicts. When I designed the course, I entitled it, “Introduction to Tibet: History, Religion, Culture and Politics.” Particularly the use of this word “culture” is a problematic one, and as the course progressed, I realized a very sharp disconnect between my original notions on culture and how I eventually came to understand such an amorphous term. The fact that I listed these aspects as being separate from one another is indicative of an initial understanding that such differentiations are simple and acceptable ones to make. Etymologically, culture is connected with the word “cultivate.” With this sense of the word in mind, and looking at “Intro to Tibet,” I chose a few very specific areas of study (history, religion, politics) to cultivate as central guiding themes, and seemed to think of them as being self-contained and self-explanatory categories. As I noted earlier, by selecting these perspectives, I necessarily de-emphasized (although not ignored) others, for the sake of teaching an introductory course – the reasoning for such decisions was explained earlier, in Chapter II. It was never my intention to imply that I would, in fact, try to articulate a singular or monolithic Tibetan “culture,” but rather that I would be exploring various cultural aspects with students. This speaks to the problematic nature of attempting to teach about something as complicated as “culture,” as well as employing such a word that is so heavily loaded. This term carries with it many different connotations and definitions, and raises some very central questions. How are religion, history and politics separate from culture? Indeed, are they separate at all? What other elements can we include under this broad terminology? It seems a typically Western (using Said’s ideas) and ultimately fruitless to attempt to dissect and separate these various dimensions (history, religion, culture and politics) when they are so heavily intertwined and couched in communal contexts. Insofar as they can be differentiated from one another, they can just as easily be interwoven. This is another instance, where I feel I understood the complicated and problematic nature of asserting these categories conceptually, and yet I required some practical element for this idea to fully penetrate. The final disparity that I noted was in regards to my own bias towards the content. I emphasized and encouraged multiple perspectives through the readings and the other information we consulted, however, I often maintain a more pro-Tibet stance; I do not attempt to maintain a false façade of total objectivity. When I use this term “bias,” I define it as the extent to which personal, subjective judgments and feelings play a role in the presentation of knowledge. This disparity highlights some of the political implications of teaching a course on Tibet. The topic of Tibet, generally, is a highly sensitive one; there are many charged feelings on many different sides. Histories are contextual and contested; visions of autonomy, religious freedom, ethnicity, power and politics widely vary between the views of Tibetans in Tibet and in exile, and those of the Chinese government, the Chinese citizenry, not to mention those of the polities and governments the world over. An obvious area of tension is that which exists between Tibet and China, which has not only a long historical legacy, but also a very raw and real contemporary context. The recent events of the protests (and subsequent police crackdown) following the March 10, 2008 uprising in Lhasa and eastern Tibet, and the buildup to the 2008 Beijing Olympics have cast new light on this tension. In the biggest uprising in almost 20 years, Tibetans and supporters are utilizing the Olympic spotlight on Beijing to bring attention to the critical status of Tibetan cultures in Tibet. Many in China would object very severely with the ways in which I approached the class, with the overall tone, and the materials we considered. The very fact that we examined writing from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama – considered to be a “splittist reactionary” by the People’s Republic of China – would send many Chinese government officials into a fit of rage. I taught this class because it is my goal to expand the understandings that exist about Tibet, although I am presenting one specific vision of it through the texts, images, topics, and ideas in the same way that I am emphasizing a specific vision through the central lenses of political, religious and historical concerns. I think my bias was most pronounced when we examined articles written on Tibet from a conservative Chinese mainland perspective. I noted that the treatment of the historical moments between China and Tibet was one-sided, and fairly propagandistic. I was very critical of these readings, however, I also tried to point out some of the valid arguments of this side as well. For example, one author accurately pointed out that Tibet was under a great deal of control from China during much of the Qing dynasty. Though I made these observations where I could, I did suggest that most of the arguments offered by these conservative, hard-line sources are fairly insubstantial. I should not give the impression I that was the only one who spoke; students were similarly critical of the articles, and also noted some of the redeeming aspects of the articles. I do not feel that I was feeding them or subjecting them to my take, but rather I offered a few points of contestation at the end of our discussion in order to complicate and critique the reading. What I think is vital in this context is to approach bias metacognitively; identify and acknowledge your assumptions and let it be known to the class in order for students to take this into account. If a teacher fails to explicitly note these views, students may be mistakenly led to believe that a given presentation is the only presentation. Of course, each person is influenced by their own biases to varying degrees, but especially in the arena of presenting information and ideas, the role of bias becomes very problematic, particularly if one assumes that knowledge is an objective, static element of reality. As I noted earlier, recognizing subjectivity is a critical element for all participants of a classroom experience. Although I do feel that such an open explanation of bias is critical, I do not argue that as a teacher, this gives one carte blanche to then be completely opinionated, but rather that total objectivity is a fallacy. Bias does necessarily exist and affects varying aspects of the ways in which we not only express ideas, but also in the ways in which we understand and perceive them. Exploring these tensions is critical for informing my teaching practice. In particular, it is these notions of struggling with student participation; authority and flexibility; tensions regarding the problematic nature of using only three teaching methods; the impossible task of teaching and separating “culture”; and the political implications of teaching a course on Tibet that are significant and recurring issues to be aware of. Through the inconsistencies between my initial theoretical outlook and my evolving practical understandings – of teaching generally, and of the course specifically – we have come to see the manifestation of these disparities. I turn my attention now toward my outlook for my own future in education.

First Encounter with Teaching
Looking back at the course, I feel there were both areas of great triumph, and also many opportunities for improvement. In terms of the former, I feel this class was a success in many ways. Judging from their feedback on the course, I see that students did, in fact, learn a sizeable amount about Tibet – by in large, they took something away from the course. We touched on several vital elements within the study of Tibet; most notably governance, the foundations Buddhism as a faith, Buddhist philosophy, Tibetan religious history, nuances in Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan political history, and Sino-Tibetan relations. The course provided its students with a renewed sense of enthusiasm for the topic. I was able to incorporate student interests and suggestions into the course as well as provide room for students to pursue their own areas of interest outside the class, in the form of their projects on Tibetan Buddhism, and their final research projects. At times, I was able to properly convey the passion I feel for Tibet, which has been one of the most inspiring qualities I have witnessed in my own teachers. For me, personally, I left the course wishing that it could continue. Although it was an exhausting and taxing process to design the curriculum, arrange the materials, tackle the logistical elements and orchestrate the course, I finished “Introduction to Tibet” with a positive attitude, feeling very hopeful for the future. It would be a grave mistake, however, to assert that there were no elements missing from my course; that it left nothing to be desired. The course focused on highly centralized aspects of Tibet – religious history, politics and governance and the like, and left little room for exploring any areas that were unrelated to the leadership – both political and monastic – of the country. As I noted in the previous chapter, this is not to say that we completely ignored subjects like class, gender, and the everyday lives of Tibetans in the cities, the high mountains and the rural landscapes. These were touched on, but not in any great depth. By choosing history, religion and politics as central lenses through which to view Tibet, I necessarily left some crucial portions of Tibet out of the picture. What is perhaps more troubling to me personally, is that this notion of selection and exclusion did not cross my mind until well after the course had begun. This may be a result of my own biases, or the fact that much of the discipline and literature of Tibetology focuses on these centralized aspects; that few authors focus on the roles and positions of power, class, gender, and the individual experience of being Tibetan within the discourse. More likely, it is probably a combination of these. Whatever the case may be, this realization has been a highly influential one, and highlights what I can improve upon. It is my responsibility then, to bring these marginalized aspects into the forefront of the discourse. Further, in terms of my teaching, I need to become more willing to open myself up to more experimentation, as Laura Wenk suggested. As a new teacher, I am fairly insecure about my own abilities, and highly impressed and intimidated by the skill of those teachers I model myself after. For me, these teachers present a dual image: they reflect the latent potential within myself to be an excellent conduit for knowledge and understanding, and also they highlight the shortcomings in my own teaching practice. My own feelings of uncertainty about my competency as an instructor lead me to cling to what little I know already about teaching. For example, because my teaching experience previous to this class was relegated to that of lecture, much of my initial curriculum focused on this method, and emphasized it above the other two. I must resist this impulse to gravitate toward what is comfortable in my teaching practice. I will speak more on this point and other areas ripe for improvement at the end of this chapter, when I turn to my analysis of the changes I can make for the future. I do not mean to suggest that I am despondent about my own ability as an instructor– indeed, as I mentioned earlier, teaching “Introduction to Tibet” has effected a profoundly constructive change in my abilities as a teacher. I highlight these uncertainties and feelings of insecurity as a means to show (to myself as much as anyone else) that there is ample room for improvement, and that there are clear and definitive dangers (such as relying on what is comfortable), which have great potential to obscure my own progress. Entering into the teaching experience, I felt that it would be a make-or-break encounter. At times, I bemoaned the responsibilities and logistics associated with such an undertaking – but these were only in the difficult moments. Looking back on my experience teaching a course (although it was a short six weeks long and had only six students participating), I find that I am invigorated with a renewed sense of determination to become an educator. I believe very firmly that a livelihood should be one that is not only fulfilling personally, but also one that has the potential to help someone else; education is a perfect vehicle to do precisely this. Teaching has the potential to impact hundreds of lives in a very real and immediate way, and puts me in a prime position to continually uncover more layers of complexity within my own studies.

Concerns for the Future
The creation of this course and the actual execution of that curriculum come from several different motivations. In one sense, I want to teach students more about Tibet so that knowledge about Tibetan cultures can live on. I want to teach students in order to glean some practical experience. In terms of what I have learned generally, my exploration of changes in Chapter III serves to address this aspect. I want to use this teaching experience to be a time of honesty and careful reflection in order for me to gain a clearer vision of how I can be a more capable educator. To this extent, I have outlined six areas where I can improve in the future. It should be noted that these areas are not simply general areas where I feel there is room for improvement, but rather, these are areas where I feel there is a deficiency of some degree. These are areas of insecurity and uncertainty; areas where I feel my grasp is only very tenuous. If I hope to continue my teaching career, these are areas where I feel I must improve. First, I need to deepen my capacity for adaptive teaching. As the course progressed, I found that I was more adept at picking up on cues the students gave me, and my focus turned from the inward towards a concern with what the students were thinking, and the kinds of questions they were asking. I can refine this ability not only through furthering my teaching experiences, but also by supporting these experiences with a foundation of theoretical understandings of pedagogy, as well. To revisit the analogy of a toolbox, I can improve upon knowing when which tools are useful for any given task or objective. I do not mean for this to sound cold or detached; the students decide much of the learning environment, and their concerns must also inform this adaptive practice. Second, I should also develop my willingness to try new methods, to be creative, to not simply employ teaching methods, but rather to create an entirely new kind of teaching, which blurs many of the lines and distinctions between various practices. For an introductory exploration of teaching, I feel that selecting three teaching methods to research and familiarize myself with was an excellent decision. However, now that such an introduction has been made, I must take it upon myself to expand the number of tools in my toolbox. Also, I am curious to see how and when I can use multiple methods simultaneously or in succession to cultivate the free flow of ideas, or conversely, where using multiple methods could result in confusion. Furthermore, I want to explore multiple different venues and mediums through which to convey information about Tibet. I have shown my students different aspects of Tibet through films, art, text, ritual objects, food, and photography. I am certain there are other ways to extend these mediums, and even add new ones – perhaps the smell of Tibetan incense – to the list. Third, I need to become more attuned to the needs, interests, hopes, desires, mindsets, expectations, feelings and histories of my students. Having a solid understanding of where they are coming from can be a very powerful tool towards helping them get to where they want to be, mentally, intellectually, and personally. This understanding comes naturally with a more extended period of instruction. If I know how to connect with their previous experiences, or current passions and interests, then I can open students up to different aspects of Tibetology that are pertinent for them. If I can use the questions from the students to guide and open up the class discussion on a given topic, then I can use their own concerns as the backbone of the dialogue. Another concept that Laura Wenk suggested to me very early on was the idea of creating a “need to know,” in that students would consult a work or a text that presented them with a difficult concept, and their confusion would shape the direction of the exploration. They would come to have this need to find out about a given topic. I had little idea of what this actually meant until I taught “Introduction to Tibet,” and in retrospect, it is precisely these kinds of practices that explore the ways in which students interact with the content, that I hope to adopt in the future. Fourth, and very closely related to the previous concern, I need to be more aware of which elements of the discipline require explanation and clarification. Sometimes, being knowledgeable about a topic means that you overlook those important concepts and connections, leaving students out of the loop. To this extent, I need to be more introspective about the obscurations and blockages I encountered during my initial encounter with the subject, and how I came to an understanding, or at least how I developed my understanding around the blockage itself. I find myself asking a recurring question that I find is remarkably useful: “what helped me to understand this?” Rereading the Heart Sutra resulted in a great deal of my understandings around Buddhist concepts of emptiness. Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught carefully and subtly refined my notions around Buddhist practice and philosophy generally. Both of these were critical aspects within my discovery of Buddhism, and I assigned them as course readings, accordingly. I must compile more of these sources that were pivotal for me, while also keeping in mind that it will not work for everyone. I am reminded that when planning a course, I can only prepare to a certain degree – if I have learned anything from this experience, it is that what is planned often changes dramatically when it is actually implemented. I must prepare myself to be totally open to what students bring into the classroom, because they are such an element that cannot be predicted. For this reason, multiple methods, mediums, sources and perspectives are needed to create a nuanced understanding of Tibet. Fifth, to the extent that I “am knowledgeable” about Tibet, I need to continually expand my understandings about Tibet, and subsequent content areas. In the same way that a musician’s skill will directly influence the quality of their music, as I deepen the facets of my knowledge on Tibet, I will be more suited to teach students in an informed way. This will include expanding my understandings of both disciplinary factual content, as well as the overarching cognitive organizations I utilize to recall this content. I often noted, both in the class and in writing, that I am still very much a student, who is still very much learning. I do not foresee this changing in the future; there will always be more to learn, more to explore, and continually deeper and deeper layers to uncover. I have found that the expression, “the more I learn, the less I know” is particularly poignant. As I have explored new areas of Tibet, I have developed new and more sophisticated questions. Another door that is opened leaves a new set of questions in its wake. In this sense, the distance between teacher and student is sometimes very short – my project itself suggests this. Sixth, I need to explore the realm of assessment and make it a more critical element of the class. Specifically, I want to focus on how and when I can employ both formative and summative assessments, because I feel that each is useful for different reasons. The former is an assessment that is continually given in order to help students along step by step – to act as a guide for the continuing and active formation of their progress. Short student reflections on the readings and continually giving students feedback on these short writing responses (because this feedback is the element that assists students) is one kind of formative assessment. The latter indicates a final indicator of some sort to show a student’s competency with the subject content matter. For example, assigning students to write a 5-7 page research paper on one aspect of Tibet requires that they select a topic, research it, and present it in a carefully organized way. This final paper is one kind of summative assessment. I want to incorporate assessment and student feedback on the course itself (my teaching, the content, the format of the class, etc.) in order to remain flexible and versatile – always thinking and searching, striving to be a more effective teacher. As I noted in chapter III, this practice of constantly soliciting feedback from the students on the form and direction of the course itself has been a vital catalyst for informing and refining my own teaching practice. In this fourth chapter, we have seen how various disparities between theory and practice highlight tensions in the field of teaching generally, and also within the context of teaching about Tibet specifically. I also examined some of the elements of the class which I felt were positive, while analyzing those areas that require improvement. Finally, I explored six potential areas for improvement, and how these relate to my future as an educator. I cannot attest to the difficulties and challenges of other beginning educators. I feel that these are crucial areas where I personally can expand; these are the areas where I am also the weakest. It is critical to include these areas of improvement as a major part of the retrospective process – failure to do so would betray the intentions of this project completely. When the time came to define the parameters of this work, I continually reinforced in my own mind that I would not simply write a “big paper”. Indeed, a practical application – something beyond theory – has always been of great significance. In this spirit, I feel I would be remiss not to utilize these realizations, and put them into effect; whether or not choose to I acknowledge it, this project has vast implications for my future practice.