The other day my daughter’s school invited to christmas celebration. Besides a really lovely program they prepared and shared with the guests, I talked to her teacher and was startled: What they do there in this small primary school is trigger the individual potential of every single child AND teach them the basics! At the same time! Simultaneously, so to speak.
The teacher recalled an incident with a school practicant: The practicant explained currency values and let the children calculate with them. The children acted little stories of buying and selling and instead of filling out form sheets, they discussed WHAT to buy and sell.They where busy for quite some time with this task. The practicant was getting nervous and wanted to end the “game”, but the teacher stopped her. Learning, he explained, was going on the exact moment when the children started to extrapolate the given task and were NOT thinking about the form sheet anymore. So why bother about that more than necessary to fill it out AFTER the learning situation?
I continued talking with the teacher and learned once more: Lots of primary schools spoil the learning desire in children during the first six months they are schooled. Instead of triggering what is inside of every single child, teachers put enormous effort in imposing what has to be learned on the children.
The same holds true for teaching in college: You have to consider and count on the knowledge and experience the students bring into your classroom. As a good teacher you have to develop and know methods to trigger what is inside – not so much to impose you own knowledge. This might be a paradigm shift. And it includes working together – with the students and with your team.
PS: In Looking through “Authentic Learning” in #change11 I just found corresponding research: Alex’s blogentry proves that creative children in the classroom are watched as being disturbing rather than welcome. Transferred to college settings I’d stick with Jan Herrington:
“So in a physical sense, it is easy to organize, but in a pedagogical sense it is actually very challenging to plan and enact because of the need to cleverly design an all encompassing task, and deal with the limitations imposed by curriculum requirements and institutional restraints.”
We will have to do all we can to foster authentic learing and thus get the creativity out of our students. We, every single one who teaches. We, the teaching staff as a whole in a given course or department. We – together with our students.
