Can't we all just get along?
There has to be some kind of balance between an "unconventional" curriculum and meeting state-mandated testing requirements. Was state testing even an issue in the readings we had this week? If not, it'll come up, that's for certain.
I believe that one of the biggest problems is being able to tell the difference between curriculum and lesson delivery. Many of our teachers immediately associate resources with curriculum and teach according to what the resource provides to meet the curriculum. There is no consideration of the students' interest level or knowledge base. So when a student is not successful, the teacher panics and ironically, feeds the student more of the same of what they were unsuccessful with in the first place. I can see that, if we make lesson delivery something authentic and/or relevant to students, we can include the soft skills which would lead to more well-rounded individuals. When students see how Math, Science, Social Studies, Writing, and Reading skills apply to their every day lives, we can provide students with an answer to, "When will I ever use this in real life?" and then there will be some relevance to their time spent in a classroom. We are pressed for time as it is, and I am not suggesting that every lesson to turn into a drawn-out project, but there has to be some sense of discovery for our students. That "connect" will provide them a basis for practice outside of the classroom (grocery store, movie theater, gasoline station), without our guidance or insisting, and THAT will turn into consideration of outside factors. How neat would it be that our students "see" the use of the character traits that we are teaching them at school in action and how it affects them? This authentic learning will lend itself to application in other mediums, for example, state testing. See how that came full circle?
No comments:
Post a Comment