EduBlog Insights

I really enjoyed reading Rob Reynolds’ “The New Spontaneity of Communities in Learning.” He discusses his experiences with learning groups as a student. He emphasized how much fun it could be to sort through everyone else’s ideas and debate those ideas without it being personal. What was interesting to me the most though was his observations on the teacher being the controlling factor in most of the learning groups in school. It all does revolve around the teacher. We call it good classroom managment and it is but we need to learn to let students have more choices in their own learning. We need to ask more of them and shape that process. We do need to guide them and offer suggestions. Most of my teaching experience has been with elementary so guidance is necessary but I think that applies at all ages. At the elementary age it doesn’t take long for them to get into what I call the “please the teacher mode.” I’ve noticed that same mentality here at the university level. The difference is that at the university level it for the grade.When my students ask me if this is what I want I always turn it back to them with a “Is this what you want?” Many are just unable to answer that. Let’s get them talking and thinking. We need to develop more activities that will encourage young people to take risks with their writing, their learning and their working together.Learn to please themselves with their efforts and feel the pride from that kind of inner growth. As teachers we need to work hard to develop a spirit among our students of honoring each other’s thoughts and work. Young people are so vulnerable to what others think of them. They are not always so nice to each other and this is where we can have control. We have to create teams that work together.We have to encourage the risk-taking and build the community. Control the parts of the environment that shape this but work at letting go of the control that does not give students a voice.. Talk to the students about it. We have them so conditioned to “the way it is” that most times they can hardly function when we let go. A teacher does have to oversee that but the teacher must learn to honor honest effort, even if it sometimes falls short of our expectations. That’s learning. Providing opportunities for them to learn how to work together and see the different gifts they each have is learning. After that we need to work double hard to help them exceed our and their expectations. We put them in the “please the teacher mode”. Let’s get them out or at least make sure the ‘please the teacher mode’ means they are taking control of their learning. There’s lot to think about as far as the “teacher control” goes. I’m still thinking and learning.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 at 3:56 pm and is filed under About Weblogs, Imported. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.