Tag Archives: Teaching

Apr 15 2010

Lessons Learned

Has your impression of teaching changed after taking this class?

Yes, very much so.

Before I took this class, I had a much more teacher-centered approach in mind.  I understand much more clearly the importance of student-centered and other alternative approaches.  Now my vision is very different and much more dynamic.  I am confident this will be more interesting for the students and much more effective in creating learning and learning retention.

My vision of classroom management has expanded considerably.  I am now very clear on the central place respect will play in rules and routines.  I see respect being an operating concept that not only provides the philosophical foundation for the rules and routines but also trues all of us to our best selves.  Respect will inform not only interpersonal behavior but also how we treat learning and how we treat ourselves as students. 

Maybe not most importantly but most significantly, this class has renewed my hope and respect for the teaching profession.  My historic experiences with teachers have been generally poor.  I carried a vision of educators as being generally self-important, intolerant, and one-dimensional.  I fully expected this course to follow the traditional teacher-centered model with politically correct vignettes throw in for bad measure.  I was truly shocked by the openhearted, thoughtful, and very modern textbook.  I was very pleased that the teacher also exemplified the highest standards of what being an educator is or should be. 

I was even more gratified to find that this class took me beyond my preconceived notions of teaching strategy.  It showed me, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, how well I had learned to emulate the teaching styles I so despised.  I am grateful to the teacher and to the authors of our text, for holding a mirror to my scars and for opening a doorway for me to become the teacher I did not know I always wanted to be.

Mar 27 2010

Unacceptable Losses

Kauchak & Eggen (2005) say, ”many new teachers end up leaving the profession. About 15 percent leave teaching after their first year, another 15 percent after their second year, and still another 10 percent leave after their third year (Croasmun, Hampton, & Herrmann, 1999)”  (p. 71). That’s an amazingly bad statistic. Forty percent of new teachers leave the profession within their first three years of teaching!

Something’s really wrong somewhere. Either the programs don’t weed folks out effectively. Or the prospective teachers don’t get the right academic training to succeed. Or there are issues with student teaching practices and/or the introduction of new teachers into teaching independently. Or there are issues of support for new teachers who are trying to find their feet. Or there aren’t sufficient remedies for teachers who’ve become dissatisfied early in their careers (“Sorry, goodbye” not being an ideal way of preserving that human capital). There are a lot of crazy statistics in education (like the amazingly low proportion of students who test proficient or better on anything). But this one is, for me, the most ridiculous. There’s either something broken in the system that forces these teachers out or something broken in the system that supplies the teachers in the first place.

It’s amazing that this doesn’t get more discussion around legislative initiatives. Education is such a central issue of our society and this is just flushing away years of preparation of eager volunteers. It is also amazing that the unions don’t do a better job of taking care of “their own.” Unfortunately, I think unions are so wedded to the seniority system that these new teachers don’t get on their radar. And of course, it’s amazing that the existing teachers don’t do a better job of helping the newcomers to their field. This is one of the easier questions to understand though. The older teachers are probably busy surviving themselves or dedicating their time to their students or counting the hours until they can retire. However, the lack of camaraderie among teachers is interesting to me. I see more polite competition than true cooperation.

Reference

Kauchak, P., & Eggen, P. (2005). Introduction to teaching: Becoming a professional (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Mar 26 2010

Attention to Detail

Students all learn differently. Of course, we need to present the lessons to them in enough different ways to cover the major different styles.

However, I have a second set of intentions, much harder. I hope, being an elementary teacher with the same students for a year, to learn how each student learns. I hope to structure my lessons, not just to cover the major learning styles but to cover how Johnny learns and Jill learns and what Sally sits up and notices. I hope to learn where each child’s interests lie and to incorporate those interests into the examples and stories and artwork so that the learning and the interests are joined. Finally, I hope to learn where each child’s strengths, passions, and power lie and to incorporate those actions, skills, and talents into the learning so that being who they were born to be and their lessons become one. 

I believe with enough focus and attention to detail, I will be able to build my lesson plans to truly fit each individual child sitting in my classroom.

Mar 15 2010

Task Analysis

What are the advantages of being able to task analyze your objectives?

Task analysis is an essential part of planning the achievement of any objectives, educational or otherwise. 

Task analysis identifies the steps necessary to achieving an objective.  In doing so, it highlights all the alternative routes to achieving that objective.  By identifying the steps, it also identifies the physical and temporal resources required.  Each of the different routes have different implications for student readiness and capability and place different demands on students’ learning abilities.  Each route requires different resources.  Task analysis highlights the executional details and, by doing so, allows the thoughtful, informed choice of learning path. In short, task analysis makes the choice of lesson plan easy. 

Having chosen a lesson plan, task analysis allows that plan to progress seamlessly and successfully.  It identifies materials and other resources needed.  It identifies time required.  It identifies areas of particular challenge, where special care must be taken.  It provides a roadmap that facilitates mental (and, perhaps, actual) rehearsal.  Perhaps most importantly, it is a confidence builder.  With a solid task analysis, the teacher can be confident of the steps to be taken and confident that the resources are in place to support those steps.

It also allows the teacher more confidence in dealing with any unanticipated issues that might crop up in the execution of the plan.  Having run through a variety of scenarios of how the lesson plan might have progressed, the teacher already has alternative strategies in mind. In addition, having rehearsed the clearly delineated plan, deviations from that plan can be done with more confidence. At very least, the teacher will be clear on where the ‘baseline’ lesson is. There is always a clear path through the material, no matter how far off that path the teacher has to go in the moment.

Task analysis is a basic skill required of effective planning. It is especially useful in the volatile world of teaching.

Mar 15 2010

Connecting with History

I think watching movies as an introduction to an area of study is very, very powerful. I went with my family and my brother-in-law’s family to Normandy last summer. This was a peak experience for me. I have studied the invasion quite a bit and had never been there before. On the other hand, none of the other people I was with knew or much cared about Omaha Beach or Pegasus Bridge. They had no reference to put what they saw into human terms. About halfway through the week, I had them all watch The Longest Day (a wonderful, very factual movie about the invasion that was filmed on the actual sites). Suddenly, everyone was very engaged by our visits and even more excited to visit a site they knew from the movie. Our last stop was the American Cemetery. That would have been attention getting under any circumstances. However, in the context of the movie and the actual sites we’d seen, it was incredibly moving, and culminating, for everyone. Creating a human or personal context for learning changes everything. That will be one of my main instructional tools moving forward.

It doesn’t have to be movies and TV shows. History and art (visual or musical) go together very well, given some human context for both. Likewise, games can really put the students into the shoes of the historical or literary figures they study. There is a game, out of print but on eBay, called Origins of World War II. I can think of no better way to illustrate not only how the calamity of WWII happened but also how good people, acting in enlightened self-interest can create disastrous outcomes. Somebody said, “Everyone has a reason.” That’s such an important concept, and so central to the study of history. Helping the student find those reasons is where the study of the past lives.

Mar 3 2010

Media Violence

What is the influence of media on children’s development, including aggression, ethnic and gender stereotypes, consumerism, and academic learning?

Bee & Boyd (2007) puts the question in perspective very well: “Television… is an educational medium.  Children learn from what they watch” (p. 411).  One study after another demonstrates the effectiveness of visual media (e.g. television, video games, movies, etc) as a teaching tool.

If the media is Sesame Street or Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood or even positively themed but less intentionally educational media like Lassie, viewers benefit.  Whether fostering racial tolerance, kindness, helpfulness, vocabulary or school readiness, TV shows have been shown to be correlated with positive outcomes for viewing children (Bee & Boyd, 2007, p. 408-409).  On the other hand, violent TV shows have been shown to correlate concurrently and longitudinally with poorer grades, lower test scores and the less developed reading skills (Bee & Boyd, p. 409).  More disturbingly, TV has been show to correlate with emotional desensitization and increases in aggressive behavior.  One study found the incidence of aggressive acts immediately following viewing of a popular, violent children’s show increased sevenfold (Bee & Boyd, p. 410).  Another study links the watching of violent television at age eight with serious criminal behavior 20 years later (Bee & Boyd, p. 410).  There also seems to be a dangerous vicious circle as regards violence and media, “the more violent television programs children watch, the more violent video games they prefer, and the more aggressively they behave toward peers (Mediascope, 1999)” (Bee & Boyd, p. 412).   

Bee & Boyd (2007) quote L.D. Eron’s testimony to Congress that makes an excellent summary of the subject: “There can no longer be any doubt that heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behavior, crime and violence in society.  The evidence comes from both the laboratory and real-life studies.  Television violence affects youngsters of all ages, of both genders, at all socioeconomic levels and all levels of intelligence.  The effect is not limited to children who are already disposed to being aggressive and is not restricted to this country. (Eron, 1992, p. S8539)” (p. 410-411).

Reference

Bee, H., & Boyd, B. (2007). The developing child (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.