“Even a man who’s pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” Wait a second… isn’t school supposed to start in the autumn?
In education everyone looks for the silver bullet, that one thing that will engage students, get them to learn and (in this day & age most importantly) raise test scores. In over 30 years I have seen many come and go, some accompanied by “experts” who charge millions and have never actually taught, others grounded in the reality of experience. Do the people sitting in the ivory tower know what’s best? Do the elected officials? Do the testing companies & their lobbyists? Or do the people in the trenches, day in and day out? I think you already know my opinion.
Once upon a time, I was able to attend conferences and learn from other teachers. Sure, I learned from keynote speakers, and got inspired by nationally recognized educators, but I think I learned more just talking over lunch with classroom teachers. How they dealt with the buzzword of the day, how they engaged students in spite of everything they were supposed to do, but then to attend a conference usually meant you had an interest in the topic. So everyone tended to be evangelical about the subject at hand.
See, at an educational conference you tended to have people running the spectrum of newbie to expert. But no one goes unless they have even the slightest interest, even if that interest is forced upon them from above. As you talk to these teachers you find almost all of them agree that if more time, energy, resources were spent on whatever the conference was about, the world of education would be a better place. All problems would be solved. If only people realized the power of reading, writing, math, economics, science, gardening, aerospace, and now (more than ever) STEM or STEAM or whatever. The sad thing is they’re all right. If only we could harness the passion of the classroom teacher, in my opinion, education would be entirely different, and may be more successful.
If a teacher is allowed to teach their passion, or weave it through their lessons, kids will be engaged. In most cases if you are talking to someone really excited about something, it tends to rub off a bit. In a world of scripted lessons, it is the script that kills engagement, and when the students see a bored teacher (“Bueller, Bueller”) why should they care? Every class doing the same worksheet, the same day, going into every room and seeing the same thing… boring. When I was a classroom teacher life was a little simpler – or I was just a rebel. My class was a space station one year and, while we learned the same stuff as everyone else, the kids were astronauts going on missions. Then my class turned into a movie studio. Again, same standards, but this time everything was done through the lens of film… our class roster outside the door was a movie poster. Papers were turned in to a ticket booth by the door. Most importantly, at the end of the year my class had a video record of pretty much everything we did. If we went on a field trip, a camcorder recorded it. Kids presentations – recorded. Poetry recitations, book talks… you name it it ended up on video. Did we learn? Yes, but more importantly, we all had fun.
I am fortunate enough now to be able teach through my passions. The state has yet to mandate a robotics curriculum for elementary schools, although computer science is mixed in along with some engineering bits. I’m pretty much lucky enough to work with classroom teachers on projects to help add to what they are doing. If they don’t have anything then I’m on my own, hoping not to step on any toes. For the most part I get to teach using my passions as a compass. From robots, to rockets, to comic books – I can figure out a way to get almost anything to fit. Right now third graders are learning basic drawing skills along with character development, plot, etc. by making their own comic book characters – while I tend to use Gizmo Girl, I fell into Spider-Princess last week and have been enjoying using her as an example. Sitting on a tuffet eating her curds & whey, when along came a radioactive spider and… you know the rest.
I was talking to a fellow teacher, who realized how frustrated they had become with the cookie cutter scripted educational model. They spent a lot of time dealing with discipline, until they went off script. They did something they thought would be cool. The kids reacted in a rather interesting way… they became engaged. The ones normally following the rules, took it to the next level, those normally disrupting, got involved, got engaged. So why don’t we do this every day? Fear of the test? Fear of our school grade? Fear of it not looking like traditional learning?
What do you believe? Do you believe that one generic silver bullet will kill every werewolf? Do we instead need to craft our own silver bullets to slay our own educational werewolves?
Just Only John by Jack Kent – A boy with an active imagination who wants more.
The Wuggie Norple Story by Daniel Pinkwater & Tomie dePaolo – It’s got a cat in it and a whistle fixer- what else could you ask for?
Big Bad Bruce by Bill Peet. My intro to Bill Peet back when I was “Mr. Bruce”
The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas Disch. It was a book before a movie!
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline It was a book before a movie too and while I completely understand how difficult it would be to hold an audiences attention for hours of watching someone play Pac Man, “Never judge a book by its movie”
Dream Park by Larry Niven & Steven Barnes. Holographic Roll Playing Game, with a murder mystery & in awesome amusement park? What’s not to love? Grab some cargo and find a copy.
Another Fine Myth (Part of the Myth Adventures Series) by Robert Lynn Aspirin. My introduction to the genre “Comic Fantasy.” Full of puns and an amazing multiverse full of demons. As I always recommend when it comes to series- start at the beginning with Skeeve & Garkin.
