Scott Garrian's Comments/ and on teaching and learning...
Bonnie Bracey
r1t...@PLANET.NET writes:
I 'd like to tell all of you from experience that Scott's comment about kids
not
wanting to learn what we traditionally have wanted to teach them and the way
we
have wanted to teach them, is right on target.
<< COSN...@COSN.ORG >>
This is a good discussion.
Scott's comment is great. In my teaching career , and I am not a newbie, I
have" found " children who supposedly hated school, and by getting to know
them better, by learning who that child was, I was better able to reach and
teach.
In addition to the use of technology, I used field trips, art, and a lot of
learning and teaching styles. It has always been my experience that kids
wanted to spend MORE time in school. It has also been my experience that after
a week or two of summer, they wanted to know how could we get together?
I first used technology in ways that are not earthshaking.
Communication
I sent home a newsletter at the end of the week and for those parents who had
email, I used it to inform them about things going on in the class. I have to
grin and say that I also had the power of the phone, ( it used to be in the
office or the teacher's room and impossible to get to on a regular basis when
there was not a line. The power of the phone was that it put me in contact
with parents and problems did not simmer, and blow up out of proportion.
But as I used the technology, in gifted and talented classes ( my first life
as a teacher) they taught us to do an interest inventories, and to let
students exhibit , use various learning styles, and to create many ways of
learning.
This was definitely not accepted then, and I have an article in Science'83,
"Schooling the Gifted" which created a mess that made me have to leave the
school that I was in. I was doing nothing wrong, but I just was not teaching
kids to take the test. I was actually teaching them, and wanting the test to
measure what it is that they could do, and all of my students were not gifted
and talented but I always treat every child as one who has a gift.
Sometimes I may not be the catalyst or the person who can develop or bring out
that talent or nudge that gift, but I always tried. Other teachers and I
learned to do bonding activities with a class, and to have out of the
classroom experiences.I try to do these things soon, in the teaching year. I
also preferred looping classes. I always worked with a counselor, and if ther
was a problem of any kind I was right on it from the beginning of the year.
HOW DO YOU BOND WITH YOUR CLASS?
If you are lucky enough to take your kids on a trip like an outdoor activity
and you craft the experience in a way to include all kinds of activity, but
also to let the kids help plan it, you are investing in their dreams and
ideas. I remember the toughest kid in a pretty mean class, asking me to walk
him to the outhouse at the outdoor lab.He was scared . It was really dark at
night. I remember discovering a child who could stand by the water and see the
trout fingerlings while everyone else tramped in the water and wondered why
they could not see anything. Children drew and sketched, and we sat around a
pond at night , sans flashlights to see the sun set. Every child did not love
me , or become perfect angels, but we had an experience to relate to, with
pictures, drawings, a newsletter we did on a computer in the hours before
sleep, and we had naturalists journals of our own to be a memento of the trip.
We hiked, and got followed by a bare butt dog( it was the first wildlife we
saw, because we were not quiet enough.)But, some of the kids from Central
America, taught us to be really quiet, and we saw more little animals,
discovered how to study a rotting log, we found the springs on the property,
and we learned a lot about the out of doors. The whole trip was a voyage of
discovery in a beautiful setting. The test? To create a trip that we would
find interesting, and have memorable experiences. My goals were to create a
love and interest for the out of doors, to start them with looking at patterns
in nature, and to be able to teach them to write about their experiences, and
to do it well, as well as use art to share the experience.
But a learning activity with technology as the center as in Kidsnetwork or as
in the Jason Project, or as in the GSN kind of projects where kids learn the
history of their community, or a NASA Mars Alpha City.. which is a way to
be a community of learners and a different type of teacher may be more
appropriate to your class. Try not to choose the journey based on a hero, but
a project that is more a learning activity centered on them where they
construct knowledge.
Even if this kind of experience did not happen there are lots of other ways to
get to know your kids and to have them get to know you. Some are the Me Boxes,
and Family posters, and collages, and things that let you as the teacher
discover the child. Technology can be used as a tool to help you do this kind
of work, but I do not know any powerful programs that have this as a focus. I
use Hyperstudio to create autobiography stacks after they have begun an
outline and done some writing , and that kind of thing .
As we pull students into constructivist learnings, we must also know the child
that experiences have constructed.
I am not a rich person, but I am rich in the wonderful rememberances of
students I have been allowed to teach, to learn with and to be involved in
their development toward life long learning. Everything in the world that we
do is not something we do on the spur of the moment, and the journey toward a
life long desire to learn starts with small steps.
Before technology, I had closets of artifacts, posters, models, books,
anything that I could use to get kids to learn with. In the secret closet, the
one where I hid things so that they would not walk or be borrowed without my
permission, my kids called it the dark hole. One class even would tease and
tie a string around my ankle when I went in to get things( we were not allowed
to keep science things from the school in the room, so I had my own things).
What I most love about the technology are the enrichment kinds of materials,
the resources, the involvement with museums and the places that are open when
schools are open, and the basic , if I need it. No one is smarter than
everything we can find as resources on the internet, but the learning
experience still has to be created to fit the landscape, and the individual
class. I still have the things, but I do not spend so much out of pocket now
to create a learning environment. I have the Internet, software, laserdisks,
DVD and creative ways of using telecommunications.
Testing has always been a huge problem for me in that many of my colleagues
taught to have kids pass the test and not for the joy of learning and
discovery. I solved that problem by typing out the objectives for six weeks,
and sharing what we accomplished with the parents. Parents do not always
understand what we are trying to do. Another thing, homework for my kids was
not a one night stand, it was toward a goal and I would check and review and
help them toward the work they were doing. IF they required parents to help
them with the homework, I knew I had not done a good job of teaching. Parents
were my rock, and my talisman in the journey of teaching and learning.
Television cannot be the only experience that creates mind maps for children.
Bonnie Bracey
www.bracey-pearl.org
"Life is like a ten speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use."
Charles Schultz