Here’s my question.
“How hard is it to teach students who want to learn?”
It seems to me that the answer is “Not very”
If this is true then the next question is what approaches, techniques and devices is your school or school system using to help student to want to learn.
And what percentage of time and resources is expended towards that goal. I’m not talking about individual teachers, but rather the organizational philosophy.
If a local school district was asked to state their Mission, how many of them would say “To instill in our students a desire to learn” and mean it.
My formal teaching experience is sparse, limited to my work as a substitute teacher. But this is what I noticed while working at our school districts “worst” high school (the one with the most black, spanish and poor immigrant students). The students were unruly and uninterested in the curriculum but when I pulled out a bunch of powerful rare earth magnets and allowed them to “play” with them, they became engaged and interested. And they started asking questions of me and each other about how different configurations repulsed or attracted and why. And as they figured something out they wanted to share it.
There are a lot of cool things in the world and as you’re exposed to them and allowed to interact you become excited and get ideas. It’s at these times when you have an idea and you need some kind of math, or background information or a bit of science that you’re ready and eager to learn it. A student who wants to learn is like a campfire and the teacher’s job is to help it burn hot and clean.
Without even considering the death of the soul that is No Child Left Behind and it legacy of teaching to the test, it seems to me that our public educational system is tied up in knots and doing everything backwards.
Pardon my ramblings