Very few students are actually grasping the information provided by the teacher. The rest aren't paying very much attention. This isn't something they want to learn. The teacher's words slip past the majority of the students' ears like paper airplanes whizzing past someone's face.
Even if the material in the classroom is something that a student does not necessarily want to learn, there is a way for teachers to truly drive the information provided into their heads.
Individualized learning.
Now, the teacher is not talking. She is showing a picture on the Promethean Board, of the reasons for the American Revolution. She only does a bit of talking, and asks questions to the students frequently. One of the students has a look of confusion on his face. The teacher recognizes it, and immediately calls the student's name. She asks about why he is confused. The student immediately responds: "This process is not making sense to me." The teacher nods. She knows the student very well. He likes telling stories. The teacher says quietly, "In a story, when the Prince and Princess have a disagreement, they separate, correct?" The student thinks. He gets it now. The Colonies didn't agree with Great Britain, so they eventually split after many conflicts.
My goal is to help school systems have a more individualized touch to them. I want classrooms in a school to work very unlike the first scenario I described. The teacher talks endlessly, up there, in front of the classroom, no doubt blindly saying exactly what was written in her curriculum. If the teacher just stopped talking like a robot and knew the students enough to personally provide the information to them by creating analogies and real life scenarios that relate to that student on a personal level, the paper airplane would not fly by the student's face. It would graze them. If teachers really taught personally, the plane could even touch the kids. Strike the students right in the face.
A great example of what a teacher should be doing in a classroom is what Penny Kittle did with a student named Lucas. Lucas first walks into her classroom, and when Kittle found out that he was from New England, she started showering him with all types of questions: "You skate right across the basketball courts?" "No way, really?" She learns so much about his life in New England, all because of the questions that she asked her student.
And Lucas probably got smacked with the airplane. Because Penny Kittle asked questions.
I remember my third grade teacher very well. It was a long while back, but I still remember him. This is probably because he was such a great teacher. When I first walked into his classroom on Open House, he asked me all the questions he possibly could. He pointed to his different posters and said: "Do you like Star Wars, Nihar?" Then I would nod, and he would nod as well. "We're going to have so much fun this year."
And we did. That was the most fun I ever had in Elementary School. He taught such hard subjects, yet I remembered everything. It never slipped from my brain. He taught me in such a way that I would never forget.
I miss it.
That is the way a class should be. If the teacher really teaches the way he/she should, the students should wholeheartedly miss it.
The movie Freedom Writers very well displays the variation of classroom environment. The movie is about a teacher, played by Hilary Swank, who teaches a group of students in a very unsafe area. Most of the students are in gang affiliations and do not listen in her class at all. The other teachers in the school don't really care about what happens to the students, and they teach very poorly. Most of the students don't even pay attention in the other teachers' classes. At one point, one of the other teachers in the school even talks about how loving and caring for the students is irrelevant to teaching. But when Hilary Swank's character sees her students not paying attention, she changes her classroom. She incorporates games and debates in her curriculum, and lets the students write in journals everyday. She lets them write about their life, and their struggles as a child. The students' grades go from F's to B's, sometimes even A's.
That's the way a teacher should teach.
A great example of what a teacher should be doing in a classroom is what Penny Kittle did with a student named Lucas. Lucas first walks into her classroom, and when Kittle found out that he was from New England, she started showering him with all types of questions: "You skate right across the basketball courts?" "No way, really?" She learns so much about his life in New England, all because of the questions that she asked her student.
And Lucas probably got smacked with the airplane. Because Penny Kittle asked questions.
I remember my third grade teacher very well. It was a long while back, but I still remember him. This is probably because he was such a great teacher. When I first walked into his classroom on Open House, he asked me all the questions he possibly could. He pointed to his different posters and said: "Do you like Star Wars, Nihar?" Then I would nod, and he would nod as well. "We're going to have so much fun this year."
And we did. That was the most fun I ever had in Elementary School. He taught such hard subjects, yet I remembered everything. It never slipped from my brain. He taught me in such a way that I would never forget.
I miss it.
That is the way a class should be. If the teacher really teaches the way he/she should, the students should wholeheartedly miss it.
The movie Freedom Writers very well displays the variation of classroom environment. The movie is about a teacher, played by Hilary Swank, who teaches a group of students in a very unsafe area. Most of the students are in gang affiliations and do not listen in her class at all. The other teachers in the school don't really care about what happens to the students, and they teach very poorly. Most of the students don't even pay attention in the other teachers' classes. At one point, one of the other teachers in the school even talks about how loving and caring for the students is irrelevant to teaching. But when Hilary Swank's character sees her students not paying attention, she changes her classroom. She incorporates games and debates in her curriculum, and lets the students write in journals everyday. She lets them write about their life, and their struggles as a child. The students' grades go from F's to B's, sometimes even A's.
That's the way a teacher should teach.
The teacher has to know the student. Really know them, personally. Enough to teach them on a personal level. The teachers have to realize that every student is different. Each kid has different talents, and those separate them from the way other students work. If the teacher knows what questions to ask when students take their initial step into his/her classroom, each teacher will definitely know which way to teach to help that student get hit in the middle of the face with the airplane.
There are a vast collection of ways to do this, but one that I have found interesting is writing. Teachers can find so many things out of a student's writing. If you let the students all lose and let them choose what to write about, then you can learn real-life experiences that each and every student has faced. Writing is a great way to learn more about your students. And, using the information that you got from their writing, you can teach in the way that you think that the student will grasp the information. And, if you are doing this right, even twenty, thirty years from now, that student will remember your name. And you, hopefully, will remember theirs.
Kittle, Penny. The Greatest Catch: A Life in Teaching. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005. Print.
Freedom Writers. Dir. Richard LaGravenese. Perf. Hilary Swank, Imelda Staunton and Patrick Dempsey |. Paramount Home Entertainment, 2007. DVD.
There are a vast collection of ways to do this, but one that I have found interesting is writing. Teachers can find so many things out of a student's writing. If you let the students all lose and let them choose what to write about, then you can learn real-life experiences that each and every student has faced. Writing is a great way to learn more about your students. And, using the information that you got from their writing, you can teach in the way that you think that the student will grasp the information. And, if you are doing this right, even twenty, thirty years from now, that student will remember your name. And you, hopefully, will remember theirs.
Kittle, Penny. The Greatest Catch: A Life in Teaching. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005. Print.
Freedom Writers. Dir. Richard LaGravenese. Perf. Hilary Swank, Imelda Staunton and Patrick Dempsey |. Paramount Home Entertainment, 2007. DVD.
