In his presentation about changing education paradigms, Ken Robinson talks about aesthetic and anaesthetic experiences. In Robinson's view, aesthetic experiences are those that appeal to the senses and inspire the heart and mind. Anaesthetic experiences, on the other hand, are those that dull the senses and deaden the heart and mind. I found this part of Robinson's lecture most interesting because it speaks so well to the epidemic facing education today. Namely, students are being medicated, "anaesthetized" as Robinson puts it, so that they can learn in the traditional fashion of the past two centuries. The inherent flaw with this strategy, in my view, is that the burden of change is being put on students rather than the educational system. In other words, we are acting like the students of today need to learn in the ways of yesterday; they need to serve education rather than education serving them. No wonder they feel bored and marginalized in today's classrooms! What needs to occur follows from Robinson's title: a paradigm shift. Education needs to serve students, not the other way around. Educators and administrators need to medicate the educational system, not the students! I can think of countless times when I was unfocused in a situation, and when the so-called epidemic of ADHD started happening I wondered if I needed to be medicated as well. The fact is that students, even older student/teachers like me, are overwhelmed with stimulation from myriad devices. Expecting them to be calm in class is insane given what the rest of their day is like. Ultimately, students need to do things in class that buy in to their need for stimulation. (That they should limit their stimulation from devices is an argument for a different post.) Lecturing to them and medicating them reminds me of the final scenes in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. We might not be literally strapping children to their seats and holding their eyelids open, but we are doing so figuratively. The change we need to make is throwing out the seat and the input and getting students doing interesting and creative work in the classroom. We need to buy into their learning styles and construct education from there. We can no longer expect to square their circles. We cannot force them to learn in the old ways. Robinson, Ken (Speaker), & Park, Andrew (Animator). (2010, October 14). Changing education paradigms. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
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I read "A Veteran Teacher Turned Coach Shadows 2 Students for 2 Days--A Sobering Lesson Learned Very Early in the Semester" by Grant Wiggins early in the semester, and I have returned to it for the fourth time finally to type up a response. As with re-reading any text, this time around left me with a very different impression than before. I think the main reason is that when I read the article earlier I had not taken over in the classroom as I have now. I am experiencing the class fully from the teacher's perspective, and I am noticing a lot of what the veteran teacher did. * * * Briefly, Grant Wiggins' article relays the story of a veteran teacher who shadows two students for two days. This teacher does all the work the students have to do and follows their schedule exactly. After shadowing the students, the teacher has three revelations: (1) Students sit all day, and it is exhausting; (2) Students passively listen for most of their classes; and (3) Students feel like a nuisance all day long. She immediately thinks of solutions that will fix these problems: (1) Let students get up and stretch at least once per class; (2) Reduce lecture time and have the students constantly doing work; (3) Be more patient, refrain from using sarcasm, and implement a time for questions so that students do not feel like their questions are a burden. * * * For the past two weeks I have been completely running the class. After reading this article again, I realize how bored students can be when I am standing up front and they are sitting, listening. I am not as guilty of the other crimes, especially the third one, but I realize how drained the students are when I am the only one doing anything in class. The fact is that sitting and listening to someone else can be really boring, almost always more boring than actually doing something. When I sit in my classes on Monday, I find myself mind-numbingly bored when the professors lecture for too long. It does not matter if I think the topic is interesting, I am waiting to do something! My main takeaway from this article was that the classroom situation needs to be flipped. If the teacher talks for ten percent and the students are working for ninety percent, they will be engaged because, duh, they will doing something!
Wiggins, Grant. (2014, October 10). A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days--A sobering lesson learned. Granted, and... Retrieved from https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/ 10/a-veteran-teacher-turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/ I agree with what Google's Laszlo Bock, interviewed in Thomas Friedman's article "How to Get a Job at Google," focuses on in the hiring process. I think that students' GPA scores and test scores are not always reflective of the skills that those students possess. I would not go as far as Bock in saying that scores are worthless, but I agree that scores often do not represent what students actually know or can do. For example, a student who is extremely talented at painting but has no interest in essay writing will probably not succeed in a traditional English classroom. But this outcome depends upon how one measures success. If one of the main objectives of the class is for the student to express himself or herself creatively and thoughtfully, then the students has not had the opportunity to demonstrate that he or she can do so. In this way, the student's score is pretty much worthless because the objective is not being reflected accurately in the assessment.
This thought opens up to the importance of providing students choice on their assessments. I think offering choice is one of the key ways that I would prepare my students to get a job at a place like Google. The fact is that not all students have the ability to thrive in the rigid curricula that exist all over. I mean, sure, students will need to write an argumentative essay to pass the AP test, but an essay is not the only way to make an argument. Moreover, if a corporation like Google wants to know that one can express the company's product creatively and in novel ways, regardless of the medium which one chooses to express it, then essay writing becomes significantly less important. Indeed, I have witnessed students make superb arguments without thesis statements or AXES paragraphs. In my class this semester, students made a creative project for Macbeth that needed to represent Macbeth's conflicted mind. I had a student who painted an abstract art piece representing one of the metaphors from the play. Another student made a cootie catcher within which were the choices that Macbeth makes in the play. One other student built a statue of bloodied hands topped with a crown. These projects were deeply personal to the students and represented their individual understanding of a meaningful topic. With that said, there is no doubt that students explained their projects with words. In fact, we graded them more on what they wrote rather than what they made. (I look back on that now as a mistake.) Perhaps the ultimate point I am making with regard to the Google article is that we should not privilege writing so highly when there are so many other options that make the classroom more equitable with regard to how individuals learn. Writing and typing will probably always be necessary; other ways of expression, teaching, and learning are just as vital. Surely Google has taken this position. If we want students to get a job at a place like Google, we need to as well. Friedman, Thomas L. (2014, February 22). How to get a job at Google. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?_r=1 |
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