I believe that many teachers
(to an extent) are “control freaks!” I
know I AM! “Control” is important to us
and is difficult for us to give it up. I
mean, if I ever “lost control” of my class, then there was little to no
learning going on. I believe this is the
reason that many of us do not “scrimmage” more often.
I also believe that many
teachers are torn between all of the cues, scaffolding, prompting, &
simplifying things for learners because “we” (teachers) are the ones held
accountable for student learning… not the students… not the parents. I mean I remember when I used to read the
exact test to our students on Thursday and then give them that same test on
Friday. I know that we have been told
before that we have to do “WHATEVER” we have to in order to make our students
successful. We’ve been told things like,
“if they are failing your class, they BETTER fail the CRCT. If they are passing your class, then they
BETTER pass the CRCT.” We have SST/RTI
meetings to discuss and find ways to modify our lessons for struggling students
“IN ORDER TO HELP MAKE THEM SUCCESSFUL.”
My husband works at the middle
school and I am at the elementary. He
used to teach math, and complained all of the time about the kids NOT being
prepared for the middle school. I HAD to
admit to him that the elementary school HAS to take some responsibility for
this. I mean, I admitted how guilty we
were of “spoon-feeding” our students.
OH BOY! I LOVE the quote on the
video-“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” TIME!!!!
Now that’s one of our biggest problems!
Teachers have to make sure that they cover ALL of the content BEFORE the
3rd week in April, and therefore feel that doesn’t leave much time
for PLAY!
I LOVED listening to Lehmann. He made the comment about the teachers' role
in the classroom and how they should understand that it is not about control…it
is about support. What’s equally important
is that this support is system-wide as well.
I still believe that many teachers are still not comfortable with giving
up their control and depending on the students to guide their own learning or
to be self-directed learners. I do think
that our more tech savvy teachers do a great job of allowing their students to
do this and use many technologies or web 2.0 tools for their learning. I just think that we could do better,
especially in our middle & high school.
I also loved listening to Lehman. Many people do not have the balance of understanding people and understanding technology. His video really changed how I look at the unlimited possibilities of using technology for student based learning. My husband works for a large technology company and his specialty is higher education. He send me information he thinks may be helpful or interesting to me. He sent me information on a Flipped Classroom. I love the idea. A Flipped Classroom sends the lectures home with the students via technology and the classroom time is used for discussions, collaborations, and working on the lectures. The teachers use their classroom time to engage and ask the students to listen to the teacher led lectures at home.
ReplyDeleteI also think time is one of the biggest problems with teaching and learning. Teachers have to find the time to teach all the required material, in large classrooms, with diverse learners, and still prepare for standardized tests. Students are expected to learn more and more information while juggling sports and extracurricular activities in order to get into a good college. Parent's split time between supporting their kids and working.
As a high school teacher, seniors in fact, I find myself saying all the time that our schools elementary, middle and high are not preparing them for the next level. The "spoon-feeding" doesn't stop in high school…unfortunately we are told the same things about grades but more along the lines of "zeros or missing assignments don't exist" or people come at us about our failing percentage at any given point.
ReplyDeleteI feel so inspired by all of the things we are reading and listening to and I get great ideas to implement in my own room but the fear of "letting go" and losing control always sits there because in the end the teachers are the ones being held accountable for test scores.
WOW Brittney! Again, I'm not happy to see some of the same things going on in other systems, but I am glad that we are not alone in being told "no zeros" and how "people coming at us about failing percentages." Seems like a NO WIN situation some times...!!!!
ReplyDeleteI agree completely! We are NOT preparing our students for the future. I got a reminder of what grades meant when I started grad school. An "A" does not mean you are smart, but rather you showed "exceptional mastery" of the course material. A "B" means that you are "above average" and a "C" shows that you demonstrated "minimal mastery". Too often I hear of students getting certain grades because of "who they are" instead of "what they learned".
ReplyDelete