I think it's a good idea to sometimes choose partners yourself, and to
sometimes have students choose partners. How in the world will children
learn to make good learning choices if we always make them for them?
But I have a bigger issue with the workshop person who said that
teachers choose the partners and that the partners should stay together
for the year. I think, frankly, that that is just plain stupid. Where
in real life does anyone only share a book they've read with one other
person? Where in real life do we not talk to different people? As for
it being a matter of trust, who are we as teachers to presume that we
know who should be a partner for who else for nine months? What about
different viewpoints? What about multiple perspectives?
But here's an even larger issue: Why do so many teachers think
everything workshop presenters say is golden? If I were at a workshop
and a presenter said we should always do something a certain way (even
if it were something I agreed with), I would not consider that to be a
very educated statement. It is important that teachers do what works in
THEIR classrooms, with THEIR students. Getting ideas at workshops,
chewing on them and discussing them with others, the pros and cons and
such, is a good thing, so I am not criticizing this conversation here.
What I am concerned with, in a larger sense, is the growing tendency of
many teachers to just do what other people say they should do, and any
tendency that tries to find the "one right way" to do anything. There
is never "one right way" in a classroom. There are many right ways.
My two cents
Renee Goularte
On Sep 4, 2009, at 5:02 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Hi Jan,
I pick my partnerships. I watch the children for a while and see for
myself who I think should be paired together. I don't even consider
letting the children pick their own. It can just cause too much drama.
It's easier to pair them up myself, and they have no problems with
that because we set the tone in the beginning that everyone works
together in our classroom. We are all here to help each other....
"The ultimate goal of education must be to get each one out of his
isolated class, and into the one humanity."
~ Paul Goodman
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