Topic: A great Sat…working smarter, not harder
What a great Sat. it has been. Woke up early, around 8am, and felt compelled to read one of the many teacher books I have lying around my room. I only got through a page before I sat down at my computer, and typed up an 8pg. essay on my philosophy of education and how to fix classrooms by working smarter, not harder. Will go into that more later.
After, I moved on to brunch at a friends apt., mamosas and banana/strawberry pancakes, followed by 2+ hours of bocci ball. Through the good fortunes of a mutual friend, I’ve found myself in a network of friendly, fun, intelligent people, and spent a full 12hours with them. From bocci to Thai, so a movie in Manhattan. Couldn’t have asked for a better day, and tom. morning, an Arsenal match awaits!
And…the best news of all, my own classroom awaits, a 6-person 4th and 5th grade self-contained (all special education students) classroom! An opportunity for me to implement my philosohpy of education with a group of students who are all below grade level in reading and math, and who have demonstrated to me on many occassionals their inability to get along without fighting for long periods at a time. But I think I have a system that can both produce a cohesive community, and develop these students as learners. More to come…
actually…for those interested, here are the 8pages I typed in about an hour, which may form the basis of the rest of my year and springboard me into some unknown land….have fun.
HEY TEACHERS… WORK HARDER, NOT SMARTER
This essay
is a Saturday morning reflection on the state of
education, my first year in the classroom, observations in my school,
discussions with teachers and students, and a philosophy of how to make schools
amazing places for teachers to work, and for students to learn.
Schools as
most of us know them, are adequate at best.
If we think of each school as its own company, and see administrators as
managers, teachers as line-workers, and students as the products, we can view
these organizations as mildly efficient.
A profit may be viewed as a student who thrives in school, a loss as a
student who fails to learn and slides through the cracks of our schools. Under the current business model, or the way
our schools are managed and function, most schools run as many losses as they
do profits. The public, through the
media and direct contact with students and those out of school, is well aware
of the short-comings of our schools.
The
question this essay seeks to address, is why this is. Why are our schools failing?
Why are we operating so often in the red, with kids dropping out of
school in high numbers, or graduating from school at all levels unprepared for
the working world? Why is teaching viewed
as such a difficult profession, where so many teachers leave within their first
five years, and many first-year teachers revealing incredible amounts of
frustration and feeling like they are running the biggest losses?
The answer
to these questions, I believe, lies in the philosophy people bring towards
education, and the practice of education and schooling that comes out of that
philosophy. For example, I am a firm
believer in a system of education that builds curriculum out of student
questions. For many teachers, this
seems like common practice, known as creating a K, W, L chart. For the beginning of any unit, teachers are
taught to create charts asking students what they “know,” what they “want to
know,” and at the end, what they’ve “learned.”
This model of learning is absolutely at the heart of what I believe
education is all about. The problem is,
is that for most teachers, this is seen as one of many required acts of a
teacher, just like taking attendance, giving homework, and telling students to
raise their hands. A K, W, L, chart,
for most teachers, means taking out chart paper, and listing student questions,
only to move on to the teacher’s prescribed curriculum.
For
example, in my first school year, our students had a thematic unit of “water,”
to be studied throughout the year. The
first day began with students listing their interests and questions about
water, and the list was immense. Topics
ranged from the Katrina and tsunami natural disasters, to where we get our
water, to why plants need water to live, to how toilets work and what happens
when someone pees in the ocean or a pool.
From these questions, a world of curriculum could be developed, creating
an engaged classroom and learners who would be continuously answering the “Learn”
in the KWL charts, and moving on to more “Want to know.” A continuous cycle of motivated student
learning. However, because of
conflicting instructions from administrators, and shaky philosophies, the
curriculum became a muddled mess focusing on a narrow range of information,
isolated from the students’ questions and motivations. Some may call this a teacher-centered
classroom versus a student-centered classroom.
In the
previous example, the blame lies in a confused system, rather than on any particular
individual. As stated earlier, the
purpose of this essay is to explore this confused system, and to propose and
illustrate a system that can best produce profits, students who love school,
who love learning, and who produce substantial work that demonstrates their
growth as both students and human beings.
This model
begins with the KWL idea that most teachers are well aware of, but makes it the
entirety of the classroom. What do our
students know, and what do they want to know?
From their questions, we as teachers help our students find
answers. In this respect, we are
teaching our students how to fish, as the old story goes, rather than
constantly feeding them fish. We are
teaching our students the most valuable skill of all, how to ask and answer
questions.
For those
already a bit lost, or hesitant about what I’ve written, let me offer this
analogy. Our job as teachers is not
simply creating lesson plans and bringing material into the classroom, but also
to collect material that relates to our students’ questions, and deliver it to
our students. During a lesson on
ancient Egypt, a 10-year old student asks, “What was the ice age?” During a lesson on fractions a student asks,
“How does the stock market help you make money?” During an English lesson on poetry, a student asks, “Can we make
up our own mystery book?” These and
other question inevitably pop up in a classroom, and are an indicator of the
need to bring in material that can help our students answer these questions.
We, as teachers,
need not know all the answers to our students’ questions, an important lesson
for our students to view us as learners as well, and collectors of
knowledge. Our job is to facilitate our
students’ curiosities. When we do this
for all our students, we may find that we cannot have a standard
curriculum. We cannot have our year’s
curriculum planned out beforehand, nor can we expect to continue with our
standard units, because our students questions are beginning to drive our
lessons in a whole range of directions.
We might still teach and discuss Egypt, fractions, and poetry, but with
equal attention to our students interests.
This idea
should come as a shock to many teachers.
So I should pause here for a moment to discuss why this should actually
be viewed as a welcome system, versus another effort to make teachers work
harder. The first reason I believe this
system of building curriculum off of students’ interests should be used, is
that it is more likely to increase student motivation. If ultimately as teachers we are concerned
with educating our students, and the current system is clearly struggling and
allowing so many to slip through, than perhaps this model will change
that. A classroom where each student is
driving their own learning with teacher support to answer their questions, is a
classroom where no student needs to feel frustrated that they cannot succeed,
or feel bored.
Second,
this type of classroom can change your experience as a teacher greatly. Besides having a classroom with more
motivated and engaged students, you can expect yourself to feel alive as a
learner as well, something most teachers don’t experience. Caught up in delivering the same lessons
year-after-year, it’s easy to begin to view teaching as just a job, as routine. However, in this new system, teachers can
begin to merge their personal real life interests, with their classroom. By modeling KWL, or put another way, by
showing students that they too have questions and things they want to learn,
and then by spending the school year pursuing their own interests, teachers are
not only able to help students thrive in the classroom, but teachers are able
to use their career, their 9-5, as an opportunity to learn something they love.
In this
system, teachers don’t work harder.
They work smarter.
This system
is both experience and research based.
It addresses principals of learning, student motivation and development,
and classroom management theories. In
creating an engaging classroom, behavior problems are likely to dip, as most
problems are a result of what some would label “poor instruction,” but I would
characterize as the traditional teacher-centered approach. Beyond having a well-managed classroom, this
system, by addressing individual student interests, is highly differentiated,
which is taught in 99% of teacher training courses as a one-size-fits all
solution to classroom instruction. For
example, a teaching course in behavior management might address a student throwing
up in the classroom by saying, “you just need to differentiate your
instruction.” So, for all those in
teacher-training land, and those of us going through our first years, this
model checks off that catch-all solution.
Most
importantly, however, is that this model addresses studies on student learning
and motivation. Students learn best and
remember what they’ve learned when they are able to make connections. That’s the reason we are taught to use KWL
charts, to access our students prior knowledge, and connect new knowledge to
what they know already. We can’t teach
chemistry to a student who knows nothing about atoms. So we begin with what our students know, and we help students see
the connections between new and old information. In a classroom of 20+ students, a teacher-driven lesson can
easily fly over the heads of most students.
So, what
exactly does my classroom look like?
How can I teach 20+ different students in 20+ different ways? That answer is coming in part 2.
I’ve
discussed my general philosophy, and will now begin to address the classroom
environment. The classroom
community. Most students enter school
and quickly learn to feel hostile towards the environment, because the
environment is hostile towards them.
Students feel controlled by teachers, who feel control is necessary to
both manage their classrooms, and to teach their students appropriate social
skills. As I wrote earlier, the current
system results in too much loss for this to be viewed as the best system we can
have.
Instead, we
need to first address our students’ hostility towards school, and get them
thinking about what they think about school and learning. We want students to become passionate and
take ownership over their learning, and to view school as a place where
students and teachers are working together to develop each other as learners
and human beings. In this system, the
company or school becomes a team with a common goal, and the output is
profit! Students teaching one another
how to read, and supporting one another in their research. Teachers cooperating to gather materials,
and sharing ideas for projects.
As for
state-mandated curriculum and basic skills, this should and can more easily be
woven into this student-centered, inquiry-based curriculum. Students must all learn how to read
accurately and fluently, so they may begin to read for knowledge, and perform
many necessary life tasks (reading directions, filling out paperwork). Students must learn basic arithmetic so they
have the skills to perform basic but necessary life tasks (money,
budgeting). And students must learn the
history of our country and the world, so that they may analyze and address the
major social issues of our time (community issues, global poverty)
In this
community, the teacher can feel released of the stress and anxiety normally
associated with teaching. They can feel
free to be creative, to learn themselves, and to work with, not against, their
kids.
Critics are
likely to be those who are uncomfortable with change and straying from the
traditions. But all of this can happen
within the traditional classroom. A
teacher must only ask themselves, am I satisfied with my classroom as it
currently stands? Do I wish there was
another way where I could teach in an environment free of behavior issues? (and
yes, even your most troubling students will have a reason to behave in this
system). Do I wonder whether or not it
is possible for all of my students to learn? (yes…even your slowest student has
questions they can begin to answer, and learn deeply about. You’d be surprised).
But most
importantly for teachers, the question is, can this system really change me and
my job? Will I truly feel happier, more
relaxed? The answer is yes. There’s a reason I’ve titled this, “work
smarter, not harder.” You’re actually
being more efficient, not just “working less,” and your profits will skyrocket.
This is the
system advocated by many educational experts, from Alfie Kohn, to John Taylor
Gatto, to Bill Gates. It doesn’t
require additional funds or too much training.
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