Children (of all ages) are curious about the world around them. They love to be guided along the path of knowledge. But they become quickly bored when their interest is not engaged. Teachers often adopt the stance of making children learn what society decides is good for them to know, whether the children like it or not. This is compounded by large class sizes, where it's difficult, if not impossible to differentiate between one child and another. Good teachers solve this problem by looking for "hooks" that will put a spark of desire in children's minds that will send them off on a self-motivated quest for one more piece of the puzzle in "the vast and endless sea" of knowledge.
If you listen to all the hype about instructional technology and learning, you would be forgiven for thinking that you should jump on the bandwagon forthwith and introduce every latest so-called learning gizmo into your classroom.
But to do so without careful evaluation of a learning gizmo's effectiveness for promoting learning would be absurd.
Yet we do it all the time...
Think of the schools you know where instructional technology has been thrown at the teachers without a thought, without a carefully considered introductory, and ongoing, teacher training program.
Just because it seems to be the thing to do.
Seneca's advice is well taken: Neither condemn nor condone instructional technology use in education until you have (1) learned how to effectively incorporate it into the K-12 curriculum; (2) given it a fair try by experimenting with it and evaluating it yourself; and (3) read the results of relevant research studies.
In a word, investigate. If investigation leads you to adopt an instructional technology, fine. If investigation leaves you unimpressed, don't touch the technology with a ten foot pole!
Sometimes it's important to seize the day, experience what seems right and good, notwithstanding the risks involved. Age, often tinged with regret, teaches this lesson. When we look back on our many years in the classroom what will we regret that we didn't do? What golden opportunities for service, for advancement, or for helping a child in need, will we have let slip through our fingers because we were too busy, too afraid, or too self-absorbed? Each day presents such opportunities. If we can end each day with no regrets, then we will enjoy a lifetime of fulfillment.
"Count your lucky stars, and be happy for who you are!" Yvonne Singer (1969- )
Both teachers and students should accept and appreciate themselves. Acceptance and being grateful for who we are creates a pleasant, more cooperative, learning environment.
The best teachers are driven by a desire to help students learn and by a determination to keep striving to that end no matter what challenges present themselves from day to day.
Whenever Johnsie Snipes' students are on their way somewhere as a group, she always marches them down the hall in a great straight line like they were little military personnel. But as kids are wont to do, they don't always stay in line, and some of them walk slowly and want to dilly dally along the way. Well, whenever this happens, Johnsie's great voice can be heard echoing through the hallway: "Walk like you're going somewhere!" She will boom out this directive and then shake her head as if to say "Oh these kids!" The first time I heard her say this, it brought a smile to my lips and I had a good chuckle. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how Johnsie's words had a broader application.
We should all live our lives like we're going somewhere. So many times, our students not only straggle in line, but they also straggle when it comes to their education. They suffer from a lack of motivation which, if left unchecked, will spill over into every area of their lives. There is no magic cure for the unmotivated child, so we need to keep encouraging our students to "walk like they're going somewhere". Thanks to Johnsie, I now frequently find myself saying this to my own kids, especially when they "get out of line"!
Beecher Stowe cautions us not to introduce a new way of doing things unless what we propose is going to be better than what we had before. This stands to reason (even though we often blithely fly in the face of this glaringly obvious advice). A corollary of this is to be sure to provide appropriate and adequate support for a new system (such as technology infusion into the K-12 curriculum) lest the last state of education be worse than the first.
As someone said: "What matters is not how smart a child is, but how a child is smart." Preoccupation with outcomes can so easily get in the way of learning. Given the right environment, a child, like a flower, will grow to attain his or her own innate beauty. Our concern, therefore, should be with the environment. If we get that right, the child will flourish.
Such wise words! Who would want to destroy any part of our world? Not teachers, that's for sure. We teachers are committed to helping tomorrow's citizens (our students) to have the knowledge they need to make wise decisions about the world's future. Failing that, we condemn our students to repeating the same mistakes that we ourselves have made. The infrastructure of education--school boards, administrations, tables and chairs, classrooms, blackboards and chalk, and (sigh, yes) computers--is irrelevant without the goodness and the goodwill that teachers must bring to the classroom everyday. A student's curiosity is borne of ignorance. The child who doesn't yet know an answer is an open vessel, willing to learn. The child who has been given wrong or misleading information, especially if it is from "reliable" sources such as parents or the media, is so much harder to reach. We constantly try to teach our students to think for themselves. We must prepare them to live in a democracy where they can distinguish, for themselves, a truth from a lie, instead of accepting blindly what they have been taught. Perfection is beyond our reach. Continuous, incremental quality improvement should be our goal. The end result will be rewarding both for ourselves and for all those students whom we serve. Good teachers warm all their students with the sunshine of their love.Ê They get to know them as individuals. They go out of their way to see them as they really are, warts and all. Some students are easier to like than others; but loving our students should not depend on attraction so much as on acceptance and commitment.ÊÊAcceptance and commitment cast loving rays less selectively than mere attraction, blessing without exception all the students in our care.. This is a recurring theme in school districts where the process of integration of instructional technology is underway. The best school districts have learned from others' mistakes, plan carefully, and involve all parties in the process from day one. The best school districts also recognize that it takes time. There are many who find it difficult to recognize that there may be problems with applying to tomorrow's world a system of education that worked well in the past. Tried and true ways of "doing" education--regimentation, chalk and talk, teacher-centered instruction--"worked" for decades, indeed for centuries. But times have changed, society has changed, and education must change, too. The problem is not so much that education was badly done before, and that therefore we must "turn back" to find again the right road. The problem is that we are moving inexorably into an Information Age where intellectual skills will be required of all citizens, not just the privileged few. Tried and true ways of doing education worked fine for students who were willing and able to cope with a non-individualized strategy for learning. Students who couldn't cope were dismissed as ineducable at woefully early stages in the process. Now it is recognized, more or less universally, that access to, and expectation for, lifelong learning is the primary goal of an education system. A less comprehensive goal will deny citizens the opportunity to cope appropriately with the demands of tomorrow's world. This is as true today as it has ever been. Travel equates with experience which equates with learning and development. When one travels, one cannot stay the same. Exposure to different peoples, places, and customs knowingly or unknowingly forces open the closed mind to let in the light of reason and knowledge. This reason and knowledge empower understanding and ring the deathknell to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.
The computer is a great tool for a wide range of learning-related tasks. For example, it's easily the best writing implement yet invented, and since writing is a powerful learning medium, the computer used for writing definitely fosters learning by enhancing the process of writing. Now, would you therefore not bother to teach kids to write by hand? Would you deny them the acquisition of this skill? Of course not! Apart from anything else, there are myriad occasions when it's just plain convenient to be able to write by hand: scribbling notes on the fly, perhaps as a reminder to get something done, or writing a personal note of thanks to a benefactor, or writing a love note to a friend. Computers are great tools, but we should know how to get by without them.
Famous last words!
We teachers must hold on to the belief that our actions, our contributions make a difference in our world. We cast a pebble into the pool of learning in our classrooms, and make ripples that flow ever outward to the furthest reaches of the universe.
As teachers, we must seek to strike a balance between emotion and intellect. We sometimes forget one or the other aspect of this equation. Sometimes we forget that the reason we became teachers was to reach children and hopefully touch them in positive ways. Sometimes, on the other hand, we get stuck in the mundane. We see our class as made up of a body of students in an abstract sense instead of seeing the individual children therein. As Mason Williams points out, we cannot help the children if we do not "know what we are doing". We must understand what it is we teach and how to teach it. Especially in this new computer age. We need to be able to go with composure and confidence into the realm of technology-assisted teaching and learning, thus modelling for our students competence in all aspects of our job.
Yeats' words complement those of Anatole France who said of the whole process of teaching and learning: "If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire." There is a debate in education that has raged for some time between the concepts of teacher-centered and student-centered learning. Teacher-centered learning strains to "fill the pail", using methodologies that attempt to pour requisite knowledge into student heads--whether those student heads are receptive or not. Student-centered learning, on the other hand, seeks to "light a fire", using methodologies that attempt to put a spark in young minds so that the motivation for knowledge acquisition comes from within, rather than from without.