Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
Appendix I from The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley has some great advice about how to discover the character of a school.
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![]() The title for this post is a quote from a teacher in Helsinki, Finland, taken from The Smartest Kids in the World, explaining why he doesn't want to know too much about the children in his class. His explanation really stopped me in my tracks when he continued, "I don't want to have too much empathy for them because I have to teach. If I thought about all of this too much, I would give better marks to them for worse work. I'd think, 'Oh, you poor kid. Oh, well, what can I do?' That would make my job too easy." (162) Apparently, the number of foreigners in Finland has increased over 600% since 1990 and most of the immigrants settle in Helsinki. The hardships faced by the diverse students in this particular teacher's class made him responds with less empathy. This was shocking to me because I've always thought that empathy was the key to good teaching but now I think maybe empathy for kids' home lives could have a negative impact on their learning. Ripley makes a good case for why labelling children as refugees or low income can have a negative effect on them if their teachers treat them differently because of those labels. She cites studies where teachers were told that random children in their classes were gifted and how those kids ended up succeeding more in class because of their teachers' beliefs. A student's parental care, background, income level, and nutrition matter for their success in education but excessive empathy based on those types of labels can compound the issue. Expectations have a huge impact on teaching. This will definitely be on my mind when I go back to student teaching at the inner city school with its diverse learners in the new year. The Finnish education system seems to be getting things right. Their students rank number two in the world behind South Korea but without the pressure cooker atmosphere. Their secret seems to be to put the pressure on the teacher candidates rather than the children. The competition to get into their university teacher training programs is fierce - on par with getting into MIT. They take six years to get their teaching degree and must complete a masters degree. They spend one year in a public school where they have three mentors to learn from and observe. According to Amanda Ripley in The Smartest Kids in the World, when the teacher candidates practice teaching their own classes, they are critiqued by their peers and mentors and the feedback can be harsh, similar to the way feedback is given to medical residents in teaching hospitals. I'd like more harsh feedback in my practicum. I think sometimes teachers are used to giving feedback to children and have to be gentle so as to not injure their fragile egos. But teacher candidates aren't children; they should be able to take the criticism. I've heard the argument that teachers who struggled in school might make better teachers than those who didn't because they are more familiar with the strategies that can reach struggling students. I had thought that the logic behind that sentiment was sound but the test results coming from Finland have me second guessing it. Ripley asks, "Would a doctor who had botched several surgeries be an ideal medical-school professor?" She compares the lack of admission standards in the U.S. to, "recruiting flight instructors who had never successfully landed a plane, then wondering why so many planes were crashing."
Academic rigour for teacher candidates, high standards for the children, and highly selective education schools are crucial to the success of the Finnish education system. Using elitism as a pejorative is backwards. There is nothing wrong with high standards and wanting the best teachers possible. I don't know why more countries haven't adopted this strategy. Perhaps I'll find out by the time I'm Finnished the book, (pun intended). ![]() I've often heard about how the South Korean education system has some of the top results in the world and I wanted to know more about how that is achieved. So over the winter break, I'm reading a book called The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way. It seems that the thing that drives South Korea's sky high test scores is not necessarily its superior school system but its unhealthy pressure and competition imposed on the students by their parents and peers. There is a culminating test at the end of high school in Korea sort of like the SATs in America except your score on the test can determine the course of the rest of your life. The score determines whether or not you get into one of the top 3 universities and if you can get into one of those universities, you are pretty much guaranteed a good job after graduation. The competition is so fierce and the pressure so great that children go to school from 8 AM to 4 PM, then have test prep classes and study period until 9 PM. After that, most kids go to private tutoring academies called hagwons. They take classes there until that have to stop at 11 PM as mandated by the hagwon curfew. It seems to me that what South Koreans have right is that effort is more important than talent. This has made them work exceeding hard, but at what cost? Even their education minister's goal is to "dismantle the pressure cooker". I'm looking forward to reading about Finland's system, which seems to be having the same great test results without the negative effects seen in Korea. I asked a musician friend of mine if he had any ideas for my blog about educational musings. He told me he didn't have any specific ideas but he told me that when he wants to come up with an interesting name for a song, he'll try to come up with as many rhymes as he can and it often sparks an idea. I started with a quote I liked from Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." Here's my process: The end result didn't rhyme but it got my creative juices flowing enough to come up with what I thought was a decent title. And depending on your genre of music, A Nasty Entropy or Stochastic Harmony sound like pretty good band names.
This summer, in preparation for the completion of my after degree in education, I explored youcubed.com and found a poster that I really loved: After reading the brain science behind the catchy slogan (https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/mistakes-grow-brain/), I loved it even more. As a developing teacher, I expect to make mistakes, inspect them so as not to repeat them, and respect them by including them in this blog to document and reflect on my own learning. By sharing my mistakes and successes publicly, I hope to accelerate my skills and become the best teacher I can be. Here we go!
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David Wiebe
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