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 |
During my 13 years as an educational assistant, there were times when I felt the teacher was doing a poor job of managing behaviour in the classroom or presenting material. I would never share these thoughts with the teachers I worked with because my job wasn't to be critical of them, it was to support them and the students as best I could. I came across this quote while reading Teach Like a Pirate: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. -Theodore Roosevelt Having had the opportunity to lead lessons of my own, I now realize how difficult it can be at the front of the class. I'm glad I was never openly critical of my teacher colleagues because, without having been there myself, I really had no idea of the effort that goes into planning and assessing, or the subtle skills that must be artfully employed to make a lesson run smoothly. I have experienced frustration at lessons that didn't go the way I planned and I've found myself yelling over a noisy, off-task classroom. But I've also led lessons that went better than expected and felt the satisfaction of that success. Either way, I'm happy that I have shed my timidity and stepped into the arena.
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Should I strive to be more entertaining? Is it in my personality to engage my students through borderline buffoonery? These are the questions that come to mind as I read Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess. To hear him describe his first three days of school, I am impressed and inspired by his tactics to sell his students on education. Some of the methods he uses in his first three days of classes include playing with play-doh, ranting and raving up and down the aisles about how to properly say good morning, pretending to be an airplane that crash lands, literally rolling on the floor, and giving an impassioned sales pitch. The silliness and clowning has purpose - it serves to break down barriers, get the kids to drop their guard and hook them into giving education a shot, making them believe that it's not only good for them but can be fun too. He says that for students, "it's easier to not give your best and then blame failure on a lack of effort, than to be forced to realize you really don't have what it takes. At least you can save face with your peers when you fail if you don't try in the first place." That's why he pulls out all the stops to convince them to put in the effort. His effort at the beginning of the year pays off later when they are receptive to his teaching and they are willing to work and learn. I'm not sure I can take it to the level that Dave Burgess does, but I'm not above taking risks, especially in the interest of providing lesson plans that stick. I had planned on singing Stan Rogers' Northwest Passage to the class and then having the students research the place names and explorers mentioned in the song but apparently, they have already done that exact lesson already. Maybe I could show them this Kids in the Hall sketch? Showing this to 10 year olds seems risky, but I bet they would love it. ![]() 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. |
David Wiebe
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