As the summer ended and the school year began, one of the things I was thinking about was NOT why we (as a collective of people) attend school. It was not a curiosity that I developed on my own – but rather something a number of people brought to my attention. It is however a question I find myself believing to be increasingly as important. After all, being that I am a teacher, I really should know why I teach.
When I ask, “why do I teach,” I do not mean why did I decide to become a teacher over an engineer. I also do not mean “why do I enjoy the work that I do”. My question is directed at the wonder of what greater purpose does education have. Much of what we learn we never actively use, and many more things we forget. Does a requirement to learn benefit the individual so much to require it of everyone? Am I only teaching to improve the lives of the individuals who gain something concrete from my classes and use it?
My first reaction to this is a belief I have held since I switched majors in college (it actually took some convincing after that switch to mathematics but I am now convinced). My academic love is mathematics. It’s a series of patterns and relationships that can describe so much of the world around us. I find that the more I explore, the more patterns I find. The more I find, the more questions arise. But in school why is math so important? Lots of reasons! We use mathematics every day in mundane tasks such as “do I really want to pay this much for something”. Some jobs need it more than others – see engineers and architects – but artists use ratios and fractions and writers often need to speak on statistics. So perhaps we learn mathematics (as a sample of schooling) to prepare us for specific professions that we will engage in.
This is not fully what I became convinced of in college (and I will continue to use mathematics as my example but I believe it holds true for other subjects as well). What I came to believe is that math is not about recognizing angles, or solving for x. Mathematics is about solving problems. When looking at algebra and solving for x, you are not taught the single correct and perfect way to find it. Order of operations doesn't make every question the same. Rather, we as individuals develop tools, techniques and methods to approach problems that might look quite different than what we’re used to. Sure, the ability to work with numbers, or have a larger vocabulary, or know when different wars took place are necessary at times, but facts from all subjects are recorded and can be looked up. But you can't gain the skills of doing by only looking up facts.
So perhaps we learn and we teach to provide students (be those students kids or adults) with more tools with which they can use to approach the world. But to what end? Many of us see school as a stepping stone to college, or grad school, or a job. Yet, as a high school teacher I cannot convince myself that I am here solely to get my students to college. A few weeks ago the following clip from the movie Good Will Hunting was brought to my attention:
Good Will Hunting - Bar Scene
This raises a number of questions about what education is. Is it a string of facts – something that anyone with good retention and reading skills can pick up out of a book in a library? Or is education measured by a degree and a rank that we can flaunt to others until we're hired. Both of these concepts have merit, but I feel that the purpose of education cannot be either. Facts with no relationships to the world are abstract and useless. A degree with no knowledge leads to dysfunctional programs and companies. So ideally we seek a hybrid of the two. Yes, I do want all my students to go to college and get a degree. Not because the degree is so important but rather because societies have moved to a place where many jobs will demand proof that an individual has attained a minimum level of skills and information. By contrast, so long as the degree does require a show of both skill and knowledge, than it is not a hollow gesture.
But education cannot just be something you're told. It cannot always be something you're shown. Many times, education is something experienced. I will once again refer to Good Will Hunting:
Good Will Hunting - Park Scene
This brings an interesting twist to the education game. The man who brought this to my attention asked “How often have you been told – ‘You'll understand when you're older’.” I know I have. And I don't know if I'd take away from this movie clip as much as I would have had I not recently had a moment when I did understand. It was a strange experience, and about something I never knew I didn't understand. However, I could stand where I was in life and look back to a slew of mistakes and tell my past self “If only you knew what you know now.” Education is never completed, no matter how much schooling an individual has. In fact, the true joy of education is when you find a subject of interest that actually inspires you to keep searching for knowledge. As long as a person keeps observing, a person will keep learning – and many of the things you learn through experience are things that you could never be taught.
So, how does all of this relate back to school? Where do teachers fall into the mix? The students? Why don't we just send our kids to the library to learn facts, and then to travel to grow wiser? If they work they'll achieve skills. What is it that makes school different? This answer (and I don’t presume that is is THE answer, but I believe it to be AN answer) came to me through a final video I found just before school started this year. It’s an “Open Letter to Students Returning to School” by John Green in which he addresses the merits of compulsory education – that is, why do we all at some point attend school:
John Green - An Open Letter to Students Returning to School
He rambles for a little bit (which I enjoy) and uses the Mars Curiosity Rover Mission as a catalyst for his ideas (also awesome) but I find what he says at the end to be most important. Education is not about the individual. Yes, we as a society need educated individuals, but very few jobs now are independent. In the professional world there is a tremendous amount of collaboration and we cannot rely solely on our own bank of information. We need each other to succeed and advance, and we need to help all people be as educated as possible. Yes, it will help benefit their lives, but it will also help benefit our own and everybody's. Education is about improving society.
Many of these views were new to me when brought to my attention. I had never really thought much on why education exists, though I (at least recently) have believed in its importance. I look back at these and see reasons and merits all over. Yes a degree is important, but education is so much more than that. And no matter how much school we take, we will continue learning until the day we die (even for those of us who’s grand plan is to just keep going…). But if the question is “Why is learning important?”, then perhaps it really is as simple as making the world a better place – and who doesn't want that?
Monday, September 24, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
Big Ideas and Very Small Rocks
Sculpting a Seminar: - Based on a "seminar on seminars" presented to me by a colleague:
Whenever one of us (teachers that is) sits down to write a class, there are some important questions we need (and hopefully do)to ask ourselves. Some of these are more obvious than others:
“What am I teaching today?”
“What will the homework be?”
“Do my students have the background for this?”
Maybe even – “Will my students enjoy the class?”
But there are also a handful of questions that are not as frequently asked (or at least addressed);
“Am I seeking mastery of this topic? An introduction? Is it review?”
“When I leave class, how will I know if my students understood?”
“Am I actively engaging my students in the class? How so? What are they doing?”
Today I want to write about one particular set of questions. Who is speaking in my class? How are they speaking, and to what purpose? Why? Much of how I run class varies by subject, but in all of them I try to have my students doing work, answering questions and discussing ideas. However, I’d never thought about it anymore in depth than that. That is until I attended this short talk on how to run a seminar. While none of my classes are seminar based, I found lots to think about and improve upon.
I was preliminarily asked “when do I want my students speaking in class?” And, “when my students do speak in class, how do I know if the conversation has gone well?” Much of these answers, in their details, fall upon the particular subject that one teaches. I will not address my specific answers, as I am choosing to write about the universal ideas, but rather the themes that seemed to appear in answers throughout the room.
There are two common ways of assessing the success of a conversation in a class. That is, we can seek a quantity of participation, or a quality of ideas. Some, in fact many, conversations are considered a success if a critical mass of one’s students have shared thoughts and ideas. By contrast, success can be measured by the depth of knowledge presented in a student’s answers. Are their questions clarifying or probing? Does a student debate rise out of conflicting ideas? Neither of these is a more true measure of success than another, but as a teacher you must have an awareness of which of these is your goal. That is to say, where on the spectrum between these two do you choose to fall?
So let’s suppose that we have established what we (speaking as a unified being) desire in our classroom conversation. What can we do to help promote that success? Do we give our class a prompt and hope for the best? It’s unlikely. First, it takes confidence to speak out in front of one’s peers. We have an obligation to make the classroom a safe environment to take risks in. Even then things can be challenging. But, as students begin to present their ideas, encourage repetition. When you emphasize a student’s comment you give them confidence in what they are saying. Similarly, draw in a quiet student. Be excited about a point and ask a new student to repeat it. This does two things. First, it keeps your class alert and aware as perhaps you’ll call on someone else. Secondly, the quiet student now knows that this information is important; it is safe. Since there’s no risk in the idea (you said to repeat it), you cannot be ridiculed for what you say. Lastly, a conversation flows. It does not have a source and it is not trying to end. Do not let a conversation be ping-pong between you and your students. Do whatever you can to get them speaking to each other; then just direct.
And this all allows us address what we want our students to do, and once going, how we can make the environment as ideal as possible. But returning to our preparation of a class, how will we present our material? This can be done in three main ways:
1) Lecture
2) Discussion
3) Conversation
The differences here are key. Know which you are doing and let it be clear. A lecture is what many of us try to avoid. It is not interactive – often referred to as direct instruction. There are times in the year that I have information my students need. Before they can try it, they need to hear it. In those times, I will be speaking, and delivering information to my students. This is a lecture.
A discussion has more variance to it. In a discussion, I can premise a question and open the floor to the students. They can move around in their beliefs and what they say, but as things progress I must correct errors and lead the students in the correct direction. It is important to realize that in the discussion there IS a correct answer. Your job is to help your students lead themselves there, but make sure they get there in the end.
Finally, a conversation. The background has been done. The information is available. The students are left to express their ideas and provide their reasons. In a conversation there is debate, and some arguments are better supported than others, but there is not a correct answer. Much of education is not about right and wrong, but rather support and reason. A conversation lets you hear points of view that might otherwise remain hidden, and might stimulate new thoughts of your own. You never know when or where you’ll hear a new idea.
When this topic was presented to me I was shown at this point the following clip:
Click Here!!!
For those of you who skipped the clip, GO WATCH IT. For those of you who have watched, you likely recognize it as the “Burn the Witch” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (I don’t actually know the scene title …but sure…). This is a valuable teaching moment, where the knight (or soon to be knight) is the teacher, and the townsfolk are the students. What kind of lesson does he use? Is it a lecture? No; at no point does he deliver information to his students. Is it a discussion? Yes; he lets his students partake in answering questions and debating to help lead them to what he “knows” to be the correct answer.
The method presented is often referred to as the Socratic Method – a tool frequently employed by teachers to help students come to realizations on their own accord. However, while this is a powerful and valuable tool, it must be done correctly. Questions must be carefully crafted to truly initiate thought and discussion. If you re-watch this clip, you’ll notice that there is very little thought put into the student responses. Rather, the questions prompted a barrage of words. This can be referred to as the “magic word game”. Don’t play the magic word game! Students don’t need to think to play it, and if there is only 1 right answer you are left with two likely cases. First, your students don’t know the word and won’t get there – leading to frustration and a loss of confidence. Second, your students get there through guessing, but what do you gain from that? What do they gain from that? Your goal should be to force students to consider ideas and concepts, not throw “very small rocks”.
------------------------------------------
When designing a lesson, know when your students will speak, how you will assess that participation, and what you can do to help generate healthy interactions. How do you want information to be revealed? It can at times be correct to lecture. Try not to do it often or for a long time, but if it were never to be used, then why are we the teachers? Don’t we have the information!? Be careful in separating discussion and conversation. Remember that one has a correct answer and the other does not. Lastly, don’t play the “magic word game”. It takes away from the value of discussion and leads to unhealthy classroom interactions.
---------------------------------------
As a small add-on, Author is asked “who are you that is so wise in the ways of science?” Truthfully, there was no science involved. Given that this was a discussion, there was a known answer already. Science takes an idea, and uses methods to seek the truth. Weighting a woman against a duck to determine her composition to be of wood, on a likely faulty scale is hardly the scientific method that we try to employ in our schools. In many ways, the scientific method is a conversation. Sure, there may be a correct answer, but we – none of us – know it. Science is the presentation of ideas to build support for a belief. That is a conversation.
Whenever one of us (teachers that is) sits down to write a class, there are some important questions we need (and hopefully do)to ask ourselves. Some of these are more obvious than others:
“What am I teaching today?”
“What will the homework be?”
“Do my students have the background for this?”
Maybe even – “Will my students enjoy the class?”
But there are also a handful of questions that are not as frequently asked (or at least addressed);
“Am I seeking mastery of this topic? An introduction? Is it review?”
“When I leave class, how will I know if my students understood?”
“Am I actively engaging my students in the class? How so? What are they doing?”
Today I want to write about one particular set of questions. Who is speaking in my class? How are they speaking, and to what purpose? Why? Much of how I run class varies by subject, but in all of them I try to have my students doing work, answering questions and discussing ideas. However, I’d never thought about it anymore in depth than that. That is until I attended this short talk on how to run a seminar. While none of my classes are seminar based, I found lots to think about and improve upon.
I was preliminarily asked “when do I want my students speaking in class?” And, “when my students do speak in class, how do I know if the conversation has gone well?” Much of these answers, in their details, fall upon the particular subject that one teaches. I will not address my specific answers, as I am choosing to write about the universal ideas, but rather the themes that seemed to appear in answers throughout the room.
There are two common ways of assessing the success of a conversation in a class. That is, we can seek a quantity of participation, or a quality of ideas. Some, in fact many, conversations are considered a success if a critical mass of one’s students have shared thoughts and ideas. By contrast, success can be measured by the depth of knowledge presented in a student’s answers. Are their questions clarifying or probing? Does a student debate rise out of conflicting ideas? Neither of these is a more true measure of success than another, but as a teacher you must have an awareness of which of these is your goal. That is to say, where on the spectrum between these two do you choose to fall?
So let’s suppose that we have established what we (speaking as a unified being) desire in our classroom conversation. What can we do to help promote that success? Do we give our class a prompt and hope for the best? It’s unlikely. First, it takes confidence to speak out in front of one’s peers. We have an obligation to make the classroom a safe environment to take risks in. Even then things can be challenging. But, as students begin to present their ideas, encourage repetition. When you emphasize a student’s comment you give them confidence in what they are saying. Similarly, draw in a quiet student. Be excited about a point and ask a new student to repeat it. This does two things. First, it keeps your class alert and aware as perhaps you’ll call on someone else. Secondly, the quiet student now knows that this information is important; it is safe. Since there’s no risk in the idea (you said to repeat it), you cannot be ridiculed for what you say. Lastly, a conversation flows. It does not have a source and it is not trying to end. Do not let a conversation be ping-pong between you and your students. Do whatever you can to get them speaking to each other; then just direct.
And this all allows us address what we want our students to do, and once going, how we can make the environment as ideal as possible. But returning to our preparation of a class, how will we present our material? This can be done in three main ways:
1) Lecture
2) Discussion
3) Conversation
The differences here are key. Know which you are doing and let it be clear. A lecture is what many of us try to avoid. It is not interactive – often referred to as direct instruction. There are times in the year that I have information my students need. Before they can try it, they need to hear it. In those times, I will be speaking, and delivering information to my students. This is a lecture.
A discussion has more variance to it. In a discussion, I can premise a question and open the floor to the students. They can move around in their beliefs and what they say, but as things progress I must correct errors and lead the students in the correct direction. It is important to realize that in the discussion there IS a correct answer. Your job is to help your students lead themselves there, but make sure they get there in the end.
Finally, a conversation. The background has been done. The information is available. The students are left to express their ideas and provide their reasons. In a conversation there is debate, and some arguments are better supported than others, but there is not a correct answer. Much of education is not about right and wrong, but rather support and reason. A conversation lets you hear points of view that might otherwise remain hidden, and might stimulate new thoughts of your own. You never know when or where you’ll hear a new idea.
When this topic was presented to me I was shown at this point the following clip:
Click Here!!!
For those of you who skipped the clip, GO WATCH IT. For those of you who have watched, you likely recognize it as the “Burn the Witch” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (I don’t actually know the scene title …but sure…). This is a valuable teaching moment, where the knight (or soon to be knight) is the teacher, and the townsfolk are the students. What kind of lesson does he use? Is it a lecture? No; at no point does he deliver information to his students. Is it a discussion? Yes; he lets his students partake in answering questions and debating to help lead them to what he “knows” to be the correct answer.
The method presented is often referred to as the Socratic Method – a tool frequently employed by teachers to help students come to realizations on their own accord. However, while this is a powerful and valuable tool, it must be done correctly. Questions must be carefully crafted to truly initiate thought and discussion. If you re-watch this clip, you’ll notice that there is very little thought put into the student responses. Rather, the questions prompted a barrage of words. This can be referred to as the “magic word game”. Don’t play the magic word game! Students don’t need to think to play it, and if there is only 1 right answer you are left with two likely cases. First, your students don’t know the word and won’t get there – leading to frustration and a loss of confidence. Second, your students get there through guessing, but what do you gain from that? What do they gain from that? Your goal should be to force students to consider ideas and concepts, not throw “very small rocks”.
------------------------------------------
When designing a lesson, know when your students will speak, how you will assess that participation, and what you can do to help generate healthy interactions. How do you want information to be revealed? It can at times be correct to lecture. Try not to do it often or for a long time, but if it were never to be used, then why are we the teachers? Don’t we have the information!? Be careful in separating discussion and conversation. Remember that one has a correct answer and the other does not. Lastly, don’t play the “magic word game”. It takes away from the value of discussion and leads to unhealthy classroom interactions.
---------------------------------------
As a small add-on, Author is asked “who are you that is so wise in the ways of science?” Truthfully, there was no science involved. Given that this was a discussion, there was a known answer already. Science takes an idea, and uses methods to seek the truth. Weighting a woman against a duck to determine her composition to be of wood, on a likely faulty scale is hardly the scientific method that we try to employ in our schools. In many ways, the scientific method is a conversation. Sure, there may be a correct answer, but we – none of us – know it. Science is the presentation of ideas to build support for a belief. That is a conversation.
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