2 posts tagged “education”

I greeted my students at the door, checked their schedules, and had their first assignments waiting on their desks.  I did not assign them seats, instead taking note of who shouldn't be sitting together and making charts after classes.  Nobody came to my class who didn't belong there, so that made me feel a little silly checking schedules, but oh well. 
The students were quiet right off the bat, working on their oh-so-exciting info sheets.  I had a writing assignment waiting on the board for after they finished their sheets- goal setting and all that.  Quite a few of the students hadn't finalized their schedules (or made them, for that matter) until halfway through the first day.  I'm glad I had something(s) to keep the ones I had occupied..  Aimless students can be a disaster, I hear.  I have backups and backup backups. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to start doing some actual work, so it won't be as painfully boring as the first two days were.  I'm excited about it. 

I've been interested in the concept of education without formal school structure for a while now, so I read Ward S's paper on free schools.  The idea of student-driven education is an intriguing one.  It makes me think of our lesson planning focus this week, specifically the set.  Imagine not having to trick students into getting involved in the educational process.  I tend to think that the educational system has a detrimental effect on a young person's sense of wonder or curiosity.  Anyone who has ever spent a significant amount of time with young children has endured the seemingly endless stream of "why?" and "how?".  When do they/we stop asking questions?  Is it because they/we have been put into a classroom and subjected to someone else's idea of what they should learn/know?  Does our school system turn curious minds into passive vessels?  I know that one of the goals of (hopefully all) teachers is to foster and encourage critical, independent thinking, to help the student learn and explore. 

When I was in 7th grade, I attended a private, Christian school in South Bend.  This school refused to assign grades in the traditional sense.  The parents did get teacher assessments of student knowledge, and the students received feedback, but the teachers' assessments were kept from the students.  One of the criteria on the teachers' rubric was "sense of wonder".  After seven years in the public school system, the majority of my teachers remarked on my lack of this "sense of wonder".  Was this a result of my schooling or of a natural tendency toward stagnation?  Working in the campus library this past year, I have started to rediscover my sense of wonder.  The wealth of information available and the abundance of intriguing ideas pulls my mind in a thousand directions at once.  Because of the rebirth of my curiosity, I tend to doubt that the previous dulling of that urge was entirely a part of my natural development. 

To tell you the truth, after reading this paper and thinking about it, I've got more questions than answers.