There was a moment during our initial meeting inside that spacious, dimly-lit, Hogwarts-style room at the beginning of class where I completely zoned out. Maybe it was from the debauchery from the night before, maybe I was just daydreaming about the weekend (MTTC tests the next day at 7am! WOOHOO!!), but most likely I was just...blah. It was 10am and I was waiting for class to start, and eventually the staleness of the room was interrupted by the entrance of our good friends from Scarlett Middle School joining us for a few minutes. The excitement and exuberance they perspired was palpable. This felt like a moment of catharsis to me for two reasons 1) Man, I miss being a kid again and 2) It seems we were making a real impact on these kids lives considering they were so excited to see us. It's certainly not a feeling I'm used to - I don't mean that in a depressing way, just that it seems social interactions as an adult lose their luster when the majority of our acquaintances are work-related, academic, or something else lacking unique substance and enthusiasm.
Anyways, it was during these brief few minutes with our Scarlett friends that one of the students stood up and gave us all some very poignant advice:
"Be creative," the student said, addressing all of us teachers-in-training. "And don't be boring."
It wasn't exactly a musing akin to Plato, but it was effective nonetheless. In six words, this random student encouraged and embodied everything I want to offer my students as their teacher - effective, creative lesson planning and promoting a classroom atmosphere that keeps my students engaged and interested in the subject matter. Immediately following this revelation, we set off into groups to discuss the Soda Ban article we had read previously - and I had every intention on trying to present some of that creativity within the group I worked with.
Our group was accompanied by librarian Rachel Goldberg, who performed brilliantly as our mentor and de facto discussion leader during our brainstorming session. As we spoke of unique ways to try and present a lesson plan based on the NYC Soda Ban, Rachel offered some sage advice: "I'm all for purposeful technology" she exclaimed. If she didn't need it, she didn't want it. It was a simple, effective proclamation that basically encouraged us to not just use technology for the sake of using technology. Be diligent, and use it appropriately and effectively. This was especially pertinent to the podcasts we were introduced to in the second half of class(along with the suggestion of using Skype) - it's quite remarkable that we can use such mediums to meld students to learning more creatively.
Anyways, back to our session with Rachel. We bounced various ideas off each other about the Soda Ban, and it appeared we had all taken those Scarlett students words seriously from earlier that morning - my group members came up with some really great ideas to present this material effectively to our students. We spent a good portion of our time together trying to answer one seemingly simple question: What was our teaching goal with this assignment? Ultimately, we all came up with slightly different answers, but there was a common thread between all our ideas: They were creative, and they certainly weren't boring.
Mission accomplished, random Scarlett student. Mission accomplished.
I like your writing style Hussein. Just like the students said, be creative and don't be boring; i think that the style of your blogs (and most likely your classroom) will be the same. I think that it is important to do these two things the student has mentioned as well as the other implicit thing that is involved in your blog; we must listen to the students. We are here in order to help the students learn strategies and course content. If the ways that we are attempting to do this is unsuccessful then we must listen to the students and adopt new practices or ideas geared towards our pedagogy in class.
ReplyDeleteIf we maintain a positive frame of mind in the classroom we will be able to focus on the students. I also think that the no matter how informative or misinterpreted a comment is, it is still a leaning tool. We can see how much they understand or how they feel about the classroom in general.
I am interested to know what your group came up with as a lesson plan. It sounds like you all had some great ideas. I also was amazed by what that student had to say. He did a great job of articulating his thoughts and presenting his advice. We all know that students want creativity from us as teachers, but knowing that and actually hearing a student say this is what they are looking for are two different things. I think that part of being creative is to use technology in the classroom to engage them. There are so many free and interactive sites that can help students to be creative in an educational way. I like how you said that we need to use technology when appropriate, that not every lesson must have this aspect in it, if it is not beneficial to the students. You want to make sure that students are engaging in the material while making meaning from the lesson, not just meaningless fun with technology.
ReplyDeleteKathelyn,
ReplyDeleteFor a social studies class setting, one of our ideas was to introduce the class with a soda ban discussion and allowing students to express their reactions. We would then ask the students to discuss similar examples of "nanny laws" by the government and tie it all together. We would then administer an Exit Ticket at the end of class asking the students to create their own public health/nanny law that they think would benefit the greater good, and have them defend their position. This idea, we believe, strikes a good balance between being informative and fun as well.
You are definitely very creative and not very borring when it comes to your ability to write blogs. I find that your blogs are very intriguing and very well written, and it makes my homework of reading and commenting on them quite enjoyable. That was a very impressive and meaningful insight that the student was able to contribute to our classroom discussion. One question I have is that I am sure the middle school student's idea of what is creative or borring is probably different than mine. I may find something extremely interesting that would put the student to sleep. How do you think we could go about learning what students find interesting and adapting the content we are trying to communicate to them to our new understanding of interesting?
ReplyDeleteI agree that we should always try to be as creative as possible in order to keep the students' attention. Also, I would like them to be interested in what they are learning. We had a similar experience in our group, in that we took a long time to figure out exactly what our teaching objective was. It also seemed that our mentor library was careful to not push useless technology into the lesson plan. Instead, she showed some fun ways she has used technology in class, and some websites, but told us to only use them if we thought it would seem relevant. I think keeping technological classroom usage in check is important, and it was great practice to try to devise a lesson plan with technology. We had a lot of ideas that seemed cool until we tried to put them into the lesson plan, then websites and online tools would sometimes seem more distracting than helpful. Also, my favorite part of that day was hanging out with the kids for a while. Wish they could have stayed longer! Great blog.
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