A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned
After having read the article, I feel my school is very similar to his experience when he shadowed a student at his school. Unfortunately the school that I am currently teaching at is still traditional, so the students spend most of the class sitting and passively listening to me talk at them. Luckily my students are amazing and are willing to listen to me talk for an hour and half, but that wouldn’t fly with the students I had the first semester. The classroom I was in the first semester was introducing common core material, so they was very little lecturing and mostly exploring and playing with concepts. I am introducing this to my current students and trying to get them to explore concepts more. Spend less time actually talking at them and more time for them to discuss and explore. I also found that when student spend less time listening and more time exploring/discussing there was less behavior issues. So I didn’t have to be such a nuisance to my student as the author describes. Just a few thoughts jotted down. I really love my school and the people there, I just hate lecturing. Redefining Teachers with a 21st Century Education ‘Story’ “If you’re a teacher, you have placed yourself in the most enviable, challenging, fulfilling role possible in the 21stcentury” I cannot agree with this quote more. I honestly thought that teaching would be some-what easy, I was completely wrong! It is such a challenging role. Everyday is different, some students can be having an awesome day and be actively engaged in the activities for that day, or they can be having the worst day and are the cause so many problems. Its hard to manage 30 - 40 individuals for six hours everyday. At the end of the day, wether it was a good day or a bad one, teaching these students something new is worth it. ‘Smart’ these days includes grit, resiliency, empathy, curiosity, openness, creativity, and evaluative thinking. I completely agree, the thing I’m struggling with is how to teach my students these traits. Evaluative thinking is something that comes easy when working on mathematical topics but empathy and creativity are something that really lurk in the background. I need help to teach my students how to create and be empathetic within my classroom. As of right now, my biggest tool is the way in which I question my students. I use this to help fuel the thought processes that improve what is considered smart these days. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorBlog by Sean Malter (the better Sean) Archives
May 2015
Categories |