John Taylor Gatto was named New York City Teacher of the Year thrice, and New York State Teacher of the Year twice. Gatto was not merely better than other teachers at doing what every teacher in New York was expected to do. He did things differently, and he did different things, by encouraging his students to do the same . For example, he once sent a student to New Jersey to apologize to a town’s chief of police for polluting his beach, in exchange for which the police chief offered her a one-day apprenticeship in small-town police procedures. Another day he sent three students at 6 AM to study the president of a trucking company as he dispatched his rigs all over the United States.
Gatto believed that classroom instruction has limited efficacy, and that many of the lessons students need to study are better gleaned in the real world, doing rather than listening. He held that independent time is crucial for effective learning, and that too much conventional schooling, listening to a talking head in the front of a room, is dumbing children down . He argued that the quickest way to educate children effectively is to get them involved in community service, giving them real responsibility and enabling them to make a real contribution to the mainstream life of their communities right away . Many of his former students returned to say that he had changed their lives.
Although the education of radiology residents takes place at a later stage of life than Gatto focused on, there is no reason to think that his principles and approach are any less appropriate for learners in their 20s than learners in their early teens. Like younger learners, radiology residents need high-quality opportunities for independent study, service, customized apprenticeships, and what Gatto called “adventures in experience.” Although no one would suggest that daily didactic teaching conferences, point-of-care education, and review for standardized examinations should be dispensed with, residency programs can do a better job by inviting residents to dare to do and learn more.
Some radiology educators might grant that Gatto’s approach has merit yet be uncertain how, in an era in which the expectations for residents to abide by accrediting agency mandates and meet milestones have never been more detailed or onerous, time for such activities could possibly be found. In this article, we report on a year-long effort at one institution to achieve just these goals, while still enabling our residents to fulfill their clinical responsibilities, pass their board examinations, and maintain the accreditation of our training program. Other residents, program directors, and faculty members may think of even better approaches, but we offer this example to get the creative juices flowing.
We attempted to identify a confluence of needs between radiology resident education and the larger field of radiology. One such opportunity, we determined, was to get radiology residents involved in service to the field of radiology early in their careers. By service we mean not just helping to care for patients but serving one or more radiology organizations. For this purpose, we chose our state’s chapter of the American College of Radiology (ACR), the Indiana Radiological Society (IRS). In recent years, our residents had played a relatively small role in the life of the organization. Few residents attended meetings, and those who did typically did little else.
Our goals for the project were first and foremost to give residents an opportunity for service learning that would help them better understand why professional organizations exist, what missions they serve, and what operational tasks they need to perform to be effective. Equally importantly, we wanted our residents to have a chance to develop as servant-leaders through their engagement with the organization. Secondarily, we also sought to develop similar opportunities for medical students, who had traditionally been essentially uninvolved with the organization and by and large did not even know that it exists.
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References
1. Gatto J.T.: Why schools don’t educate. 1990 New York City Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech; Available at: http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html Accessed February 1, 2017
2. Gatto J.T.: Dumbing us down: the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling.1992.New Society PublishersNew York
3. Gatto J.T.: Weapons of mass instruction.2008.New Society PublishersNew York