Entries Tagged 'Most Popular' ↓

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

Many people have voiced the sentiment “Life is short”. I posit that life is too long.

If you don’t believe me, try staying awake through the whole thing. Really. Give it a week and you’ll be ready to die.

We only get through life because we break it down into smaller units and work our way through them. “One day at a time”.

I suggest that every time you go to sleep it marks the end of your life and that upon waking you’re starting a new one (reincarnation?).The device that links these separate lives into one continuous life is what I call “the underlying social contract”.

The underlying social contract states simply that you agree to be the same person today that you were yesterday. Think about it. Every day you continue to maintain your personal relationships and routines. Sure they alter over time but there is no “break”. And if there is a break then we assume that the person has undergone some kind of emotional or psychological trauma. In fact it is this repetition of behavior that makes life seem short.

Consider this. You drive somewhere for the first time. The route is new, the sites and landmarks are new. The trip seems to take a longer time because everything is different.Now imagine that this is your new commute. You’re driving there and back every day, month after month. You start to do it automatically. You view the route in short hand. It feels shorter and shorter.

The same thing happens in your life. As you look back over months or years of routine it doesn’t look that long. It’s been foreshortened.

Now imagine that you had spent the last few months walking to Argentina. Your memories would be so full of new experience and you would have gone through so many changes and adaptations that it would seem like forever.

The moral of all this is that life is as short as you make it.

One thing you have to understand is that money is not important. It’s the lack of money that’s important.

Here’s what I mean.If you have money to pay for everything (food, shelter, transportation etc) and you have enough so that when your car breaks you fix it, your TV dies you replace it, you get sick you go to the doctor. If you make enough money to do all that ( and have insurance and savings) you have enough.

If you were to make twice as much money, how would your life be different? Bigger house? Better clothes? Eat at fancier restaurants? It’s not an important difference.

But if you don’t have enough money, then, when your car breaks you can’t fix it, you miss work bills don’t get paid.

This is important.

I believe in the ‘golden rule’, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

Philosophy is the underpinning of your existence. Your every action is informed by your philosophy. Even if you don’t think you have one, you do.