I have a confession, after reading
Cycle One's articles and listening to its Podcast I found myself conflicted
with my own ideals of curriculum and its purpose. This internal conflict occurred
whenever I thought about Donovan's case.
I have always believed the
curriculum was put in place to allow fluidity of growth and scaffolding between
grade levels. That curriculum needed to be taught in a way that would allow
students to think on their own, to prepare students to be a part of this ever
changing world. I suppose I am a behaviorist as described by William Schubert in Perspectives on fourth curriculum traditions when he states that “we need to
identify the kinds of behaviors that help students become successful in today’s
world” (Schubert, 1996, pg 171). Teachers need to prepare students to become
thoughtful thinkers and problem solvers. In the long run, teachers are unaware
of the future. What is finite is that the future holds the unknown. Just as revelations
have changed century to century so we must imagine they will continue to do so.
Teachers are preparing students for the unknown world. The equipment that
students need for that preparation is inductive reasoning, the ability to
overcome failure, and proper scaffolding to come about a solution on their own. I urge you to read the article, Preparing All Students, (All Means All) for a Rapidly Changing World. I think this article sums up my point best when it stats that we need to teach "learners how to learn." The article talks about how globalization and modern technology has created competition between U.S. students and students in other countries. It also explains how much of the curriculum in place at schools is centered around high stakes testing. I would like to note that this article was written before the Common Core Standards were released, standards which now have objectives which focus on peer reflection and individual thought processes opposed to a means to an end. In essence, this is what preparing students of today for the world of tomorrow is. We are giving them the equipment to take whatever road they want to reach the final destination. As teachers, we should be more interested in the path the student takes and the reason for it, not their final destination.
How are we, as teachers, able to
give students this equipment? I think it is very important to think about the
classroom setting and when students are most engaged. I know in my classroom it
is when we are doing hands on work, when we are doing any type of inductive reasoning, or
when we create KWL charts before becoming engrossed in a new topic. The times
when I see students most engaged are always during indirect instruction, when
students have the control over their learning. Now, all of the tools I use in
my classroom could go horribly wrong if students were exposed to this
information before they were ready. This reminded me of Dewey’s (2001)
statement that “it is certainly as futile to expect a child to evolve a
universe out of his own mere mind as it is for a philosopher to attempt that
task” (114). Dewey understood the
important of guiding a student in the right direction opposed to just telling
them. For example, it would be a problem if you asked students to make simple
circuits with given materials and never having heard the word circuit before or
students being asked to create a KWL chart on Lewis and Clark without any
recollection if they were explorers or scientists.
Students will admit defeat
early on and have learned nothing. However, it is a teacher’s job to stop and
help students before they reach that frustration level and their love of
learning is lost.
Now, although my believes were
very set in stone in terms of what type of teacher I am, how I should teach,
and when I should teach it. I have come back to Donovan’s case again and again
in the last few days. Is that school really preparing Donovan for the ever
changing world? I don’t think they are. However, I do think the key difference
in Donovan’s case is that he has not mastered the ability to take care of his
needs in the world now. The focus for him does need to be different. He needs
to know survival skills for his own needs before academia. These skills Donovan
will be able to carry with him into the future. The skills for taking care of oneself
will never change what is deemed historically and scientifically significant might.
As I was watching Ken Robinson’s
TED talk he mentioned that “creativity comes about from the interaction of
different interdisciplinary ways of seeing things” which I couldn’t agree more. I then thought about the multiple intelligences teachers focus on during
lessons. I try to focus on at least three different multiple intelligences when
I am teaching a lesson in the hopes of playing towards different students’
strengths. This website breaks the multiple intelligences down and explains some activities associated with each one. It is worth checking out to get you started when catering towards the multiple intelligences in your classroom. You might also want to look at the Library of Congress website for your Visual Learners. They have wonderful pictures and secondary resources for you to use in your classroom. What multiple intelligence are you? Take a quiz to find out. My top three were Logical/Mathematical, Intrapersonal, and Kinesthetic. One last helpful resource is the following website. It will give you more information about the multiple intelligences.
A focus of both Schubert and Dewey’s
articles had to do with a child’s schema or prior knowledge and how an educator
must use this when thinking about curriculum. When it comes down to it, a child’s
prior knowledge is the second item I think about when creating lesson plans. My
first thought is, “Where do I want them to end up?” followed by, “Where do I
start?” The question of “Where do I start?” is what makes a teacher’s life
challenging and ever-changing. Each year I will have a different set of
students in my classroom that come to me with different backgrounds and thus
will take different things away from the lesson. I will never forget this year
that our writing coach came into the classroom to give my students a writing
lesson. After the writing lesson a student raised his hand and wanted to know
what a beach ball was. The teacher had mentioned a beach ball in her writing
lesson. This fourth grader had never heard of or seen a beach ball before. So
the enter lesson he was wondering about what a beach ball was. Do I think he
took anything out of the writing lesson, possibly? However, without knowing
what a beach ball was the story the writing teacher was telling would have lost
a lot of meaning.
I think about this student and
this writing lesson often. It would do the students a disservice not to tell a
story because students have not been introduces to all of the vocabulary in the
story. However, there are ways to combat this problem, such as showing pictures
as you are introducing new words or giving the class a pretest to see what they
already know (I'm thinking of a pretest before teaching other content, not a short story). In the case of the beach ball, I think about the exposure this
fourth grader has had in his life never to come across this word before. The
comfort that I can take is that this student felt safe enough in the classroom
setting to take a risk and ask a question. This student wants to learn and grow
to a deeper knowledge base. I think that if you have a safe classroom environment you can make the classroom as rigorous as you want. Students will let you know what they don't understand and be risk takers.
