I think that most of our students understand that the final objective of an education is to find a job, become a productive member of the society and provide for their independence. With that said, I do not think schools are doing a good job of preparing students to go out into the business world and think on their own two feet. With the focus on CCRPI scores, testing, and grading, students do not have a lot of opportunities to make mistakes, to learn by trial and error, and to show how they would apply the knowledge that they have learned to new situations. As Wiggins says on his blog Great Teaching Means Letting Go, we need to help our students become “autonomous learners” by turning ourselves into facilitators and mentors that foster self-esteem and good problem-solving skills.
Teachers are taught and told that scaffolding is a fundamental element of effective teaching and that we must use this technique in combination with differentiation to help students’ transition from the lower levels to the upper ones. Now, this article Great Teaching Means Letting Go, tells us to let go and allow our students to learn from their mistakes and to use all of their resources to find out which one is the most appropriate for the situation that they are facing. This is a big change and a challenge that I think it will take a long time to spread all over the educational community, especially now that the government wants to tie teachers salaries to students’ performances. I enjoy what I do and I’m not afraid of changes, but there are a lot of teachers who fear new things, and this will be a significant shift in the way we educate the next generation.
I like the idea of allowing students to make mistakes and find things by trial in error, in places like a classroom, where mistakes do not have extremely serious consequences, and where we can look back at what went wrong, fix it, and try it again. I think the hardest part of this shift, will be getting administration and parents on board with performance-based evaluations, where a grade is defined by the student's ability to problem-solve not by the capacity to recite facts, dates or subject vocabulary.
Another thing that I had never thought about and Chris Lehmann mentioned in Inquiry: The Very First Step In the Process of Learning, is the fact that we put our students in a situation of having to deal with multiple bosses/teachers on a daily basis. We ask them to learn, retain and show comprehension of material learned, while at the same time dealing with different personalities, teaching styles and expectations. I know every teacher brings something new to the classroom, and maybe developing more cross-curriculum lessons where several teachers can be involved in the process of creating the lessons, the objectives, and the final evaluations, can help with those transitions.
It actually quite ironic that schools aren't already a safe space for students to make mistakes and learn from trial and error. With the amount of time students spend in school, especially those K12 years, where else will there be time to do this type of exploratory learning. Definitely not on the job. Its obvious we need to restructure our educational system.
ReplyDeleteYou and I wondered about similar questions after reading the article and watching the video. How do teachers support the students who don't "get it" or who don't understand and have no idea where to start? How do teachers support students who are not motivated and have no interest in struggling with a task to better understand it? If the game is "pass the test" then why would teachers work on projects instead of test practice and debriefing how to answer the questions? I attended K-12 public schools before accountability testing. I remember presenting a third grade sea anemone project and all of my science fair projects. Those activities not only helped me develop logical reasoning skills they also helped me find my interest or passion. However, as a teacher, I feel like I don't have the luxury to have students work through projects because of the pressure I feel to prepare students to pass the test.
ReplyDeleteI think school have taken away soft skills and teaching every day skills like, keeping a budget. Schools are in competition with each other and we are worrying about scores. I understand that, but when our students graduate, they are lost.
ReplyDeleteI do want our students to be functional citizens in society, but I do not think they want to take control. Why should they? We will "over-help".
In the last paragraph, my colleagues and I have talked about how students have to learn the different rules. They know whose class they can be tardy to, ones that will give retakes, and ones that will let them have their phone out. Just like with different teacher personalities, we have different student personalities. (Whew!)
You are so right when you say it will be difficult for stakeholders such as administrators and parents to shift to the performance-based assessment system. Admins are hard-wired these days to have hard, tangible, numerical data to report to higher ups and to tie with our pay.
ReplyDeleteI have been taught for 10 years now that scaffolding is a MUST and to not 'teach the test' but to 'teach the test' wink, wink. Both Mr. Lehmann and Mr. Wiggins say that this is harmful and I agree. Our students do need to learn what it is like to make mistakes and how to fix them or at least not repeat them.