Day 8…
..has me thinking about the things that have truly changed my teaching–and I realize that they are few and far between. In 27 years there have been so many trends and fads that have crept (or flown) through education. Thankfully most of them left as rapidly as they arrived. Here are my “top 5″
- Orff-Schulwerk: this process approach to teaching music convinced me, almost immediately, that it was about MAKING music, not teaching music…and that shaped my music classroom permanently
- Bloom’s taxonomy: I’d learned about it in college (of course) but it was an inservice given by Shelly Pixton over 25 years ago that showed me how you actually use it to shape what you teach–and the power of it. Until then it was just words on a page and not real
- Cooperative Learning (Johnson & Jonhson)–changed the shape of my classroom for good—it added the focus on the essentially social nature of learning–and was really about what we are now calling 21st century skills. I much prefer Johnson & Johnson to Kagan–Kagan is about learning the “tricks” Johnson & Johnson was about understanding the concepts so you could flexible apply and manipulate them to meet the needs of your students.
- Cognitive Coaching–at this point I’m out of the classroom–but I have learned that I cannot offer solutions–I can only help others think through their problems to come to their own solution (and what a lesson for the classroom)
- Patterns of Thinking–this structure for helping students break down complex questions has become invaluable–and it’s frustrating that, because of poor collaborative planning share these techniques has come to a standstill.
So, where’s technology? I guess #6 is technology–and as I think about how I use it–it has an organic structure to it. The challenge remains–how do you help teachers understand the power when they don’t experience it? For me, 15 years ago, the idea that, when we were singing about “redwood forests” I could show the students 100 different images of those forests “on the fly” convinced me that this way going to change the way I teach and the way my students learn….so I continually wonder why the classroom hasn’t really changed that dramatically. The most powerful technologies are what Peter Reynolds refers to as “blank slate” software….these are the applications that will turn the 21st century into a new renaissance of learning and creativity.
All of this came about as part of a quick discussion of interactive white boards today–what I see is a technology that highlights everything that can be negative; a focus on direct, whole-group instruction using electronic versions of 50 year old worksheets and calling it “interactive” because one child gets to come up to the board and move a block to reveal an answer…at least when every child had a worksheet they were all interacting with the information. Look around the room–after the first few weeks you will still have students “disengaging” until it’s their turn. So, in the end, IWBs are no where on my list of “top 5″ or even “top 100.”