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Wait...you think teaching methodology never changes? I suggest you figure out what that means before you make statements like that.
Meaningful teaching methodology never changes.
Changing things around to think that one method will get 30 underperforming students to love school so that superintendent X gets a raise probably happens all the time and it's your fault for going along with it and not challenging him that what he is proposing will not improve anything.
You saw 1 minute and 27 seconds, most of which featured an incoherent teenager who has the vocabulary of someone about five or six years younger ranting like a schizophrenic. There's no way you can look at that video and get any sense for what's happening in the class. Maybe the teacher lacks enthusiasm, but boring people still have important information to pass along once in a while.
Only the most dedicated students will tune in all year to hear important information that might be passed along once per month.
That is very true. I had a professor in college who was as boring as they could get but the man was brilliant. I had to train myself to pay attention but it was worth it.
I also agree on the video. I'm surprised the teacher was reprimanded based on that video. That is testimony to the sad state of education these days. When I was a kid, if I did this, I'd get suspended, have to appologize to the teacher and everyone including my grandfather would tell me to do as I'm told in school!! Now the teacher gets put on leave because a student flies off the handle.
If you're considering teaching as a profession...RUN the other direction.
If what the kid said was true, he should never apologize.
I hate those fake apologies.
First of all, it doesn't really accomplish anything if the apology is not genuine.
And second, it conditions kids that lying is OK if important people are involved.
Good luck telling the student why lying is wrong later on then if the principal pressured him to lie in the 1st place!
Yes, it was only a 90 second clip....but you can just hear the utter apathy in the "teacher's" voice. She's just there to collect her cheque. She's got that beaten down tone that only comes with waking up every morning and crossing an X on the "days left till my pension" calendar. You don't need any more context than what's provided to divine that. The kid started laying his tirade on a little thick at some points, but the gist of what he was saying rings pretty true. Yet another example of why my kids will *never* attend public school.
The teacher is trying to defuse the situation and get the student out of the room. The last thing she wants to be is engaging. She did what she should have done under the circumstances.
So would I but I just do as I'm told. The idea is to get students talking to each other. It's believed this style of teaching engages students more than a lecture format. I will defend this style of teaching in classes like geometry though because geometry is applied mathematics. I cannot teach you how to reason through a proof. I can show you proofs but my doing 1, 10 or 100 doesn't teach you how to do them because you must reason through them to do them (you just can't learn to think critically by watching someone else think critically. You learn to think critically by trying to think critically, failing, trying again, failing, trying again, getting some right, trying again and then it starts getting easier.). Since they are learned by reasoning through them, this is, exactly, how a class like this should be taught. The discussion comes after the kids have tried on their own and with friends to figure it out. IMO, my job in my geometry classes is to get the kids unstuck when they get stuck and, while they complained like the dickens early on, many have come to appreciate that they can now think their way through a geometry problem, often, without my help. More and more my job is to confirm that they got it right, which is really cool. We got to this point BECAUSE i made them butt their heads against the wall, let them get stuck and then helped them see where they got stuck and why and then we added more stuff and they got stuck again, rinse and repeat. Some classes do lend themselves to this style of teaching. Others do not, IMO. I hate teaching chemistry this way. If I give kids two test tubes containing clear liquids and they mix them and get a yellow precipitate....they have NO CLUE what just happened. I can let the students talk until the cows come home and they will not figure out what happened. I need to tell them what happened and why it happened and most still won't get it. Next year will be interesting if I'm still teaching.
The student shouldn't work for the teacher. They should work for their own education. THIS is what is missing from education in the US. The idea that the student is responsible for their own learning regardless of whether the teacher lectures or hands out a packet and expects the students to work togther to problem solve and figure it out.
I agree with you on watering things down for the smart kids and the other kids just copying. That's why I don't like this format for classes like chemistry but one of my metrics on my PR is evidence of student talk and students discovering the material. In order to accomplish this, I can't stand up there and hand it to them. I have to give them something to chew on and struggle with. If I stand up there and ask questions, 2/3 of the class will not engage. The only advantage I see is that I can walk around the room during group work and nudge the ones who don't seem to be participating. I do, however, think the top learns less in most classes this way and the bottom just copies anyway. The middle might actually benefit.
But what I think of this style of teaching doesn't matter because the powers that be have declared this is the direction we are going. What you don't realize is that education is one big ongoing experiment. We're not allowed to do what worked yesterday because that's old fashioned and outdated. We have to keep up with the times if we want to keep our jobs and the times say that student talk not teacher talk is the way to teach now that and using technology...never mind it seems to be more of a distraction than anything else....sigh...
I don't know about world history, but we're being instructed to pick out the most important topics and only teach those in science. We're being told to teach fewer topics but teach what we teach to a greater depth. So we aren't teaching the entire content in 9 months. We're going to teach about 2/3 of the content. They call these standards "Power standards" so parents won't realize that what we're really doing is teaching less material. They're not power standards because they matter most. They're power standards because we think we can actually get those in.
All of this makes you wonder why anyone goes into education. Unfortunately, you learn the truth only after taking the job. We all entered this profession as naive as you are about the way education works (nothing against you. I'm just saying that until you've stood in front of a classroom you just don't know what goes on in education. Being a teacher is different than being a student.).
If you knowingly know something is wrong, but do it anyway, you are part of the problem.
It would be like giving your kid bad medicine and you know it will hurt them, but hey, "The doctor said so!"
You can get students talking to each other just as much by assigning homework as you will having them waste class time doing so. Except with assigning homework, you ALSO have the class time.
I could justify the proofs in geometry, but that's like 2 weeks of work in one year of one class. Using that as why every class should go to packets all the time is ridiculous!
*********r performance evaluation. That's just you being selfish. It's a trap. The district puts it on your evaluation and then if you do it, claims that "you weren't forced into packets. You CHOSE to use that system." And then you have no recourse.
WHO CARES about the powers that be? Those powers aren't going to teach a class. YOU do! If YOU stand up for what you believe is right, then enough people like YOU will be heard and the new approach won't be mandated. In fact, a better experiment anyway is to have 2 groups of students and then compare. And no., one year with 60 students isn't a big enough sample size.
If it worked yesterday, WHY would you change it? Are you not happy that it's working? I swear you guys worship these powers that be! Just because they pay you doesn't mean they OWN you. "Times are changing" is the biggest con job in the book. The human brain takes centuries to evolve. Everything didn't magically change in the last 20 years. And yet when you go along with such tactics, it's no wonder you're taken advantage of.
You talk about teachers not being respected? Well, I for one, would not respect someone who does what someone says just because they are the boss. That's weak and lacking moral conviction.
lol, so now you're teaching less material too? Oh, I'm sure that will really improve learning!
The teacher is trying to defuse the situation and get the student out of the room. The last thing she wants to be is engaging. She did what she should have done under the circumstances.
In other words, it's just like the guy who you responded to said.
Who cares about being engaging when she can sit there and say "Who cares?" and not be paid any less.
Yeah me too. I still have one that I had suspended asking me where I live.
I think we need PO boxes....Every year, I worry that some pissed off student will figure out where I live and do something stupid. So far, so good but there always seem to be a few that I pray never figure out where I live.
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She did what she should have done under the circumstances.
