THE reflection on Smadar’s middle school classroom:
T – for Trust – Trust in yourself; trust in your students; build teacher-student and student-student relationships of trust
H – for Hidden – Teach the hidden curriculum: care deeply, communicate, and model. Students will forget math formulas, but remember that you cared.
E – for Educate – From the Latin "educare", "to bring out". Educate like you are peeling an onion – remove layers of falsehoods and bring out the truth. The learner can recognize what’s true and what’s not. Genuine understanding is often an “Aha!” experience – recognition of the familiar, known truth.
Smadar: Trust in one's self and one's students is indeed central to the success of any educational experience. We trust that we know enough to guide our students through the challenges they face, and they in turn trust that we know what the heck we're doing.
ReplyDeleteThe Hidden curriculum, or in other words, the everyday world, is perhaps the best venue for that elusive teachable moment. I find that the best lessons I impart to my son are the ones I don't plan for at all, but those that present themselves in an organic form. The wandering mentally ill woman yelling at the chairs in the park, for example; or the difference between a fallen wet leaf and a fallen dry leaf in our rainy autumn weather.
With respect to the onion analogy: I think it's the perfect way to visualize both the teaching and learning elements of middle level education. I truly enjoyed reading and reflecting on your post!
The MLEP Advisory Board web site provides information and advice for NLU students (and others) about how to become effective middle level educators (retrieved from web.me.com/yamwbp/Advice_4_MLEs/welcome.html). On the “Ideas and advice” tab there are “views on teaching and learning” and “obstacles that MLEs face and obstacles that YAs face”, where the MLEP advisory board members shared their views. In writing my own “views of teaching and learning” I describe a symbiotic relationship between learner, teacher, and the environment. The learner’s internal state has to be ready for learning (physical, emotional, psychological needs taken care of), and the learner has to be cognitively capable and motivated. In turn, the teacher has to have the training and motivation to teach and deeply care for the YA, and engage him or her, differentiated for the learner’s unique style. Finally, the environment has to be conducive to learning both in terms of physical conditions and resources. The views of teaching and learning on the web site describe similar issues. I would like to focus on one quote that resonated with me. “My view of teaching and learning has grown so much over the years. I find that being a teacher is the most difficult and rewarding job. I find transferring what I know to my students is a great gift, but they in return teach me so much more”. This is the kind of quote that adds a deep emotional dimension to the profession. This educator has hopeful, panoramic view of what it is all about. The obstacles I wrote about were all mentioned in the “obstacles” listed, except one glaring exception. One key obstacle is the technology distraction overload. Kids are passively viewing television and movies, playing video games, apps, texting, email’ing, surfing the internet, facebook’ing, google’ing and so on. They are bombarded with rapidly changing, often content-less images and sound-bite size texts. We then require them to go to school. Even in the most progressive school, teachers require students to sit for a longer period of time than they are used to, and focus on a topic, often requiring them to attend and think deeply and critically about it. When attention issues in children are noticed, often medication is a bandage cure. It is obvious to me that the pendulum has to swing, perhaps slowly, back to equilibrium. Parents and educators can implement certain programs such as an “unplugged” day (for both children and adults), or a “no TV” week, book reading programs such as “Battle of the Books”, and other means of slowing down the media onslaught, in order to “take back the learning”.
ReplyDelete