‘Teaching students to do what?’
That was the phrase from a recent ‘Moving at the Speed of Creativity’ podcast (courtesy of Steve Wycoff) that really struck a cord. I don’t have long to write this post, so I will be concise, never a bad thing. Dr Wycoff’s point is that we should be focus on why we teaching our students, more so that what we are teaching. He positions a number of rather frank statements that raise concerns over the extent of unused learning, the fallibility of testing and finally the real responsibility of teachers. To that point I have borrowed a second key point raised
A teacher’s job is not to teach kids. A teacher’s job is to create meaningful, engaging work whereby kids learn the things we want them to learn. (Phil Schlecty)
Do we as teachers provide opportunities that give students time to grapple with difficult lessons, to really learn something? Or do we merely deliver a checklist of learning skills? It is the difference in knowing something and doing something that emphasised. Have you listened to Steve? Did I miss the point? In reflection, its what I do with this learning that counts….
Hey, I wrote about this on my blog too! http://tinyurl.com/557ad4
I think what Dr. Wyckoff would say is that we need to be giving students more real world tasks to do, more “driving lessons” than having kids “reading about driving.” We give them projects to do and, by doing them, students will pick up the skills and knowledges they need because they have to use them to complete the task. I’m pretty sure that’s the theory. But that doesn’t answer the question, what kind of projects are we going to give them? I think that’s the tricky part.
Dean, I too thought it was an excellent podcast. I will definitely keep an eye / ear out for more discussions from Dr Wyckoff.
The kind of projects indeed, we are looking at how we can inter weave our Personal / Social education with ICT. To give ICT some real life applications for our younger students 11/12 yr olds.