Random Thoughts

I am always amazed by the connections I can find between the different blogs I read on a regular basis.

The first post I read today was from Bee, who wrote about how stifling school feels to her, now that she is back from sabbatical.  She says:

Going back to school in February just confirmed once again that change just does not seem to happen in closed environments.  Same conversations in the teachers’ room, same unsolved problems from 25 years ago and endless meetings, during which there is more red tape than a decision to act….

And of course, classrooms are no better.

Teachers drone, kids get bored by looking at the nape of the same neck for hours and cannot sit still.

And it is true — that is how so many, many classrooms are at any and all levels.

Then I moved on and read a post be Patrick over at Chalkdust 101 about the need for our students to really interact with what we are trying to teach them if we want them to learn anything.  He says:

The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning.

He has some wonderful graphics — one of PET scans of people engaged in different “learning” activities.  It shows increased involvement of different parts of the brain as the person is more active, more engaged in the learning.  Please go to Patrick’s post to look at that picture if nothing else.

So how do we move from Bee’s classroom with the droning teacher to one that engages students in their learning?  Bee explains that technology alone isn’t the answer.

With instructional technology alone, the difficulty in staying on task – they connect to social sites, message their friends, play games. Same problems as ages ago, just “enhanced” by educational technology.

So what’s the answer?

Patrick refers to a model developed by Fisher and Frey that shows a shift from teacher responsibility to student responsibility.  But this isn’t a permanent shift, with the teacher working his/her way out of a job.  Rather it is a shift within a lesson or a unit.  It starts out with me as teacher giving a focused lesson and then gradually turning responsibility over to the students.

I like to think this is something I do, but I am not sure I really do it.  I think I have a tendency to skip some of the steps.  And that can place too much burden on the students.  As I am struggling right now with my classes — or rather some issues in some of my classes — this is something I need to think about more.  What do I need to to do to ensure that my students are really engaged and learning?

First of all, thanks to those people who commented on my last post, encouraging me to take pictures. I appreciate it. Thanks, too, to Gabriella for making me feel guilty for not having uploaded pictures to Flickr yet!

I am stuck with photography where I used to be stuck with writing: I can’t see that anyone would be even remotely interested in any pictures I take. I don’t seem to be able to find anything unique or beautiful or even interesting to take pictures of. I went out to the back yard today and took a couple shots, but they weren’t even interesting to me! I am going to keep trying, but it may take me a while to work up my courage.

It goes back to what I was saying about the Nikon site: they want you to figure out what your passion is right from the start. That is where my problem is. If I knew what I wanted to photograph, it would be easier to do it, I think.

Do I have it backwards?

While in Albuquerque, I bought my husband a new digital camera. See, I wanted one, and he thought I should get a really good one. But I know myself: I will take snapshots with it. What do I need a 10x zoom for? So, he gets the new Canon and I get the “old” Sony: 7 megapixels, 3x optical zoom. I am happy and so is he.

I have never considered myself particularly artistic. He is definitely the photographer in the family. But I have an urge to be more creative, to take more pictures. I look at the wonderful shots Teacher Dude posts on his blog, and I long to be able to do the same.

So today when I saw a post on Open Culture on the Nikon Digital Learning Center, I was really happy. I haven’t done much more than just look at it yet, but I want to take some time and really check it out.

The hard part, for me, is the first step they talk about:

Find the type of photography that moves you!

How do I do that? It’s the same problem I used to have with my writing, though, so I am fairly sure that if I explore photography enough, I will eventually figure it out. At least I hope so.

I have always been so focused on words. I want to break out of that, to become more image-oriented. Maybe this will give me a little guidance on taking pictures and maybe that will inspire me to move beyond the written word. At least I hope it will.

Tim over at Assorted Stuff has a post that I have to comment on. He is talking about some reading he did over the break, especially the book What is Your Dangerous Idea?. He was especially talking about the dangerous idea of Roger Schank. Schank writes:

My dangerous idea is one that most people immediately reject without giving it serious thought: school is bad for kids — it makes them unhappy and as tests show — they don’t learn much.

and

Schools need to be replaced by safe places where children can go to learn how to do things that they are interested in learning how to do. Their interests should guide their learning.

Tim says he finds himself wanting to argue but agreeing with a lot of Schank’s reasoning.

I understand that well. I was a public school teacher when I pulled my children out of school to homeschool them. I was sure it was the right thing for my daughters, but it was hard to explain to my co-workers. Today, one of them is an RN with her Bachelor’s degree in nursing and the other is an attorney.

My son, who was born while his sisters were being homeschooled, was the real test of this, though. He never went to school except for brief spurts when we lived overseas. His education was largely self-directed. He was, as a friend of mine pointed out, “unschooled”, not homeschooled. And he is doing just fine as a young adult, thank you. He is fascinated by everything from ancient Japan to cooking. He hasn’t found what he wants to pursue as a career yet, so we don’t have any final answers on him, but I am not worried.

When children are allowed to pursue their interests, they learn. It does not match any state-mandated curriculum in terms of its sequence, and it may not be covering exactly the same material, but it is a valid education. And I believe it serves them better than what is forced on them by others.

I took some time this morning and figured out how to add links to my blog. It wasn’t hard. All it takes is desire and a little time. Of course, once you get started, it may take a lot of time because there is always something else you could add or do. But it is nice to know I did something new, something that wasn’t done for me.