I also think some administrators undermine our efforts by focusing overly on the quiet classroom led by the teacher. At my previous school I was admonished for sitting on the floor with my students while we read together. I was providing support for the text for students whose reading level was not up to the social studies textbook. I invited anyone who wanted to join us while I read, and had a group of about 9 students around me. (It was a class of 23, and I had four ELL students who had recently arrived in the US and spoke nary a word of English) We all had copies of the text, and students were reading along silently while I read aloud. The other students were quietly reading in pairs using whisper phones, or reading silently at their desks. A few of the pairs were quietly discussing the questions at the end of the reading selection (I had to follow the pacing and curriculum guide which included answering the questions at the end of the chapter. I felt that discussing the questions was appropriate for third grade students) The principal came in, called me to the side, and told me to get control of my class. She wanted to see them in their seats immediately. I called the students to their seats, while she got a TA to watch my class. When I went to her office I was told that would not happen again, I was to always be in charge of my class, and not be sitting on the floor with them. She thought I was highly unprofessional. Students were to be admonished for cheating and encouraged to do their own work. This was my wake-up call that I was teaching at the wrong school. Fortunately, I found my home where I am now. As frustrating as it is without some of the acoutrements of school (cafeteria, gymnasium, art and music teachers) I feel like I am better able to adress the issues of disengagement more effectively while adressing the needs of individual students. One example of how I did that this year is my class came to me with an intense curiosity about chemistry. While chemistry isn't a part of the fourth grade curriculum, I figured that I could find a way to include some chemistry throughout most of the curriculum. I used the chemistry connection as a way to get them engaged in whatever we were studying. This meant I had to be flexible in my plans, and be willing to put in the extra work required on my part. It meant that I had to revise some lessons, shorten some, and throw some out entirely. But the rewards were great. First, the students were interested in going forth, second I deepend their learning, third, they felt that they mattered to me, which to me was the most important thing of all.
Joy/NC/4 How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go hand in hand. http://www.responsiveclassroom.org --- On Sun, 6/22/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Understand] Understand Digest, Vol 4, Issue 16 To: [email protected] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, June 22, 2008, 9:24 PM > Maybe, just maybe...there is a strong tie between the 'Fourth grade > slump' > and the age at which we have schooled out all the curiosity of early > childhood... > Jennifer I think this is very possible, Jennifer. One of the things I have battled is the feeling that students already come to me in fifth grade comfortable with the structure of unthinking schooling. They WANT me to just give them answers, to give them papers and more papers, to let the hand-up addicts control the class while the rest doze off into oblivion. Each year I battle this preordained culture and some years I am more successful than others. Understand, I am not blaming teachers here. They are working within the culture. It stretches way beyond the classroom IMHO. I generally start my fifth grade science unit by telling students I would feel very successful as a teacher if I can return them to their 3 year-old selves. They look at me like I am out of my mind and then I talk about how they had a natural curiosity back then that annoyed their parents and caregivers enormously. Usually, someone in the class knows a three-year-old, starts laughing and calling out, "Why? Why? Why?" Then we talk about how why, how, and what if can take us to wonderful learning places. When students ask fabulous and impossible questions in my class, I get very excited. I often have a posting for fabulous questions. If they ask me to answer them, I offer to help them know where to look. It is the start of rebirthing curiosity, but it takes time and patience. Some students will go overboard to begin with. Others will not see the value initially. Some things that I think stand in the way of curiosity in our classrooms are: --ditto on hurrying through curriculum. As Gardner once said, "Coverage is the enemy of understanding." --not listening, really listening, to children--if we are not interested in their observations, however simplistic they may sometimes appear, then they will refrain from sharing them and eventually (in some cases) from thinking about them. --classroom management--people I meet, parents, administrators, other teachers, mistake the quiet classroom for the better classroom. And I do value quiet thought (I love that about reader/writer workshop), I also notice that when you begin to value student thought, they act up more--they can be more argumentative, more passionately loud, more likely to call out thoughts and turn to their neighbor if the wait to share might be too long. These behaviors are not perceived as positive by outside audiences, even though I have come to be quite comfortable with them (much prefer them to a bunch of deadheads who do not care what we are discussing) --remembering to ask students why they think something...so much of curiosity is housed in the "Why" of things. :)Bonita _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
