Having just completed my 75% week, where I am about to begin
my no-cooperating-teacher 100% two-weeks, I realize - almost alarmingly - now
that one role of a teacher, that is often overlooked by myself, is to teach.
Writing lesson plan after lesson plan, I realize I am a believer of
inquiry-based learning. Where students learn through discovery and self-manipulation
of variables that lead to facilitated epiphanies of facts. This translates more
obviously to math and science, where knowledge can so easily be discovered
through these children's innate desire to ask questions and to find out more
about what the world is and why it is around them. This can also be seen in
writing and reading, where the teacher presents the value of a small skill for
students, before they are set to independently practice and apply the
particular skill.
And so it was weird/hard for me to learn that not only does a teacher establish
an environment, differentiate materials for students, and present lessons that
channel children curiosity to knowledge, but that, oh yeah, students are meant
to learn new facts as well.
In my human body science unit the other day, as students were piecing together
Mr. Bones' bones, I realized I didn't know exactly where the *** bone
was. I knew it was probably the bone that surrounded the sternum and that
connected the ribs in the front... but I didn't know confidently enough
to answer my student's question so that I would know that he could continue in
life knowing simple true facts. (or at least not learning something
wrong)
Why do grade schoolers look to teachers for all answers and believe
everything we tell them? That's one big responsibility.
And so I decided that, yes, me, who really doesn't know about anything other
than a little biology, psychology, math and English, had to take that extra
step to (joyfully) master fields of knowledge in order to become a teaching
teacher.
Here's an excerpt from a book I've been reading:
"The one-lesson-ahead morality is what makes so many elementary
school classes dull and uninspiring. The teacher doesn't understand
much of what he is teaching, and worse, doesn't care that he doesn't
understand. How can the children be expected to be alert, curious, and
excited when the teacher is so often bored?
The need for elementary teachers who are serious-thinking adults, who
explore and learn while they teach, who know that to teach young
children mathematics, history, or literature isn't to empty these
subjects of content or complexity but to reduce and present them in
forms which are accurate, honest, and open to development and
discovery, and therefore require subtle understanding and careful work,
cannot be exaggerated. The time has passed when the school-marm,
equipped to teach the three R's by rote and impose morality by
authority, has something useful and important to give children."
-- Herbert Kohl,
36 Children (1988)