I knew I wanted to further my education. I knew now was a good time- no family and no real commitments outside of work. This was a time in my life I could make school a priority....so I jumped in. I do not know what I want to do once I receive the degree. I like being in the classroom for now. But eventually I may want to step into other roles, and hopefully this degree will open doors down the line.
Here is my frustration. I'm not learning very much. I learn way more from my google reader, twitter, my brother, my principal, the teachers on my team, MY STUDENTS. My math class meets for 3 hours every Monday night- this week we were talking about proportionality. We spent three hours measuring body parts, looking for relationships between them, graphing this data, determining proportionality. Okay... I did a very similar activity with my students last semester. My sixth graders can do this. I get the point- we are all teachers and he is trying to share possible lessons...but of the three lessons he shared with us for teaching middle school proportionality....they were all things I could easily find using google. By myself. Without driving a total of 3 hours and sitting in this classroom for 3 hours and without paying tuition.
Why is education not teaching things that I cannot google? This problem extends to my classroom...I realize this. I'm currently teaching converting measurement.... Guess what?
I get it. Its a skill they need. Its in my standards. I have to teach it. But I refuse to let myself become a teacher that only teaches these things. I have to be better than that. I have to teach my kids things they cannot Google: how to work with others, how to think, how to reason, how to problem solve, how to take risks, how to ask questions, how to create a product, how to communicate their ideas....etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment