Student Centered Learning

Everyday we as educators are given a new list of to do's. The list generally includes making sure all students are reading at the right level, and every lesson you teach can be tied to a standard and lead to better test performance, and make sure you are incorporating the six pillars of character, or the bullying prevention lesson, or the new study skills desing, and the list goes on. It is a list we never see the end of we just check off the same tasks everyday and there they are back staring at us tommorow. So with all of these things on the list that WE are being help responsible for can we really allow students to direct their learning? Is student led discussion or cooperative learning groups the most effective way to check things off the list? After all the students haven't been trained in the newest reading/writing/math/ insert new program here.

This weeks chapters have lead me to think that the student led classroom might just be the most affective at achieving all of these goals. Afterall who do the students listen to and trust above all else? Their peers! Yes I know we would all love to believe that it is their parents or educators but c'mon people five minutes in a high school hallway and you will know what I am saying is true. So I have now come to see my job in a different way--my job is not to be the sole provider of all the information that needs to be imparted in the days lesson. My job is to give the students the skeleton and the tools to add the meat onto the bones. Now this does not mean I can be absent and walk away from the process. I still need to be a good pilot of the plane and gently and unobtrusively guide it to the right landing pad, but I need to work on allowing my students to take the controls more and lead themselves to the landing pad of information. The benefit being students working together to reach the right answer have ownership which leads to pride which leads to good feelings and with any luck a desire to try it again!

Lesson Planning

TIME, what a valuable commidity that ther is NEVER enough of. In college obtaining my undergraduate degree many of my subject centered education courses focused on making lesson plans or unit plans for different topics. This was important and a valuable learning experience, however since leaving college unless it has been for another conintuing Ed course I have never made another. I post lesson plans weekly during the school year, and I have found myself sitting down with a blank calender to prepare for two maternity leaves and laying out the information to be covered worksheets to be used etc. but never have I sat down and planned all out goals objectives, the whole works a lesson.

Please understand I think the taxonomy and the learning styles discussed in the chapters are important to my teaching and I think I need to work harder to take these into account when preparing for the week, but cannot honestly say that I will be changing my habbits enough to write out in depth lesson plans. This all comes back to time. I need time to study keep up on the standards and to meet with collegues and prepare for state testing, and to correct assignments, and and and, the list goes on and on.

Are my students better or worse off for this lack of "formal" planning? I don't know the answer, but I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Nationwide Education Standards

Two of the main ideas that really stuck with me in the first two chapters was first the idea of teacher's working in "isolation", and also the idea of "standards" for teachers and also for curriculum and how both of these ideas affect how we do our job. I found an article in Education Week that addressed the idea of Nationwide education standards.

As it stands right now each state has their own set of standards for almost every subject if not EVERY subject and each grade has its own version of these standards. As a teacher in 7th-12th grade teaching Language Arts/English I have been charged with educating my students and teaching them based on the North Dakota English/Language Arts standards for those grades in North Dakota. While every teacher in North Dakota teaching in my grade and subject area is using this same set of standards--it is extremely likely we each have a different way of doing that, now multiply that times 50 states and while standards might have some overlap you have thousands of teachers teaching the same subject to the same grade in extremely different ways. While I don't believe that having nationwide standards will completely bring us all together and relieve some of the isolation and make as all one big happy English teaching family I do feel it facilitates some interesting interaction.

If I now have the same standards as English teacher's across the nation, I now have a much wider group to go to when I need lesson plan ideas, or when my school is struggling in an area I can put out a quarry nationwide for help. It creates a common language which by itself brings us all a little closer.

The second affect I feel this has is allowing students from across the nation to be on a more even playing field. Now you can think this is good or bad, but if all students in all 9th grade English classes across the nation are being taught from the same set of standards, this has to lead toward some equality. I believe this equality will also lead to my students in small rural North Dakota being more able to compete with the student from large urban New York City.

I am aware that some teacher's would prefer less government "intrusion" in their classroom but I personally welcome this change and look forward to feeling part of a greater community of English teachers across America.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/06/01/33standards.h28.html