A New Pedagogy

Will Richardson’s blog from Sept 2, titled Opening Days, was quite thought provoking. In it he states that while schools are talking more about technology, it is mostly talk about how to add technology to classrooms instead of conversation about changing education. There is so much more to be done with computers than just word processing, creating power points and doing minimal research, but most school districts are not using technology for much more than these things. It is helpful as a teacher to be able to access the web to find lessons on subjects we’re teaching, but how do we make it a common medium, as common as a textbook, paper and pencil? What would it take to really move our educational system into the 21^st century? Many of these questions seem to be answered in his previous blogs about school districts being monetarily rewarded for maintaining the status quo, and top level administrators who are woefully out of touch with the actual happenings of a classroom, as evidenced in his blog Lawsuits? What Lawsuits?

Let’s face it, money, or the lack thereof, drives the realities of education. We are feeling the squeeze right now, and school districts are no different. How can we improve technology in the classrooms, or even develop a new philosophy of educational technology when we can’t even pay the teachers who are currently standing in the classrooms? How can we supply schools with computer labs, let alone students with laptops, when we can’t even get enough books for students?

I appreciate Richardson’s push to get educators to think about a new pedagogy and his desires for us to ask ourselves the tough questions about education. Are we helping students create? Are we willing to create with them? What are we afraid of? But when I stand in my own classroom and read student writing I wonder if I really need students to be more technologically savvy, or do I really need them to work at becoming more literate? What is the best way to achieve this? Are these ideas mutually exclusive? Writing can only be improved by writing more, whether it’s done with a pencil and paper or keyboard and monitor. Reading can only be improved by reading, so in these instances more technology does not necessarily help. What would be powerful would be letting students converse with their peers across the world about the importance of education, and allow them to dialogue about the realities of their worlds and how they are going to bridge these gaps when they are adults and leading these causes…in just a few years.

Instructional Design Models

Advanced Organizers and the ARCS learning theories differ in their origins. Advanced Organizers are cognitive and focus on how the brain makes sense of new information. The central precept of this system is that the brain is logical and orderly and new information must fit into that system. The focus is how the brain processes and stores new information while connecting it to the old. Most of us have used advanced organizers. They include activities such as skimming a text before reading, anecdotal accounts to pique student interest before beginning a topic, and using graphic organizers, which are visual representations of ways for students to organize new information. KWL charts, cause and effect charts, T charts, concept maps, and webbing are just a few examples of graphic organizers, all of which are given to students before the new topic is introduced. Advanced organizers are pre-learning tools that bridge new information with previous knowledge to help the learner place new concepts into long term memory.
Contrasting with the cognitive approach of advanced organizers is the ARCS design—Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction—which is a motivational theory whose focus is making students want to learn. The idea is to make new concepts enticing and vital at the onset, and then allow students to feel successful upon acquisition of the new material. The difference between the two learning theories is that one is affective—feeling centered—and the other is knowledge driven. Accessing student motivation in order to introduce new concepts is different from constructing schemas on which to “hang” new ideas to help new concepts fit into a “slot” in the brain.
Advanced organizers and ARCS are similar in that both learning systems seek ways to make sense of new information. Both systems try to pique student interest at the outset with similar techniques. Both seek ways to make the learner feel successful, ARCS by allowing learning to take place in small segments, and Advanced Organizers by cuing students to important concepts at the beginning of the lesson. Both theories want to make connections to learning that already exists in the brain.

Beginning Phase of ARCS Lesson
To Kill a Mockingbird Introduction

General characteristics of audience—15 year old regular education sophomore students. Prior knowledge with themes of the story involve prejudice felt for being teenagers, racism, single parent households, hypocrisy, growing up, injustice, familiarity with literary elements
Demographics: most students come from middle to lower middle class households, many single parent households; many deal with the ideas in the novel such as racism, injustice, socioeconomic difficulties
Motivations: most students will fight reading this novel because they will not see that it has any relevance for them, but once they read it they love it. I also tell them there’s bad language, a drug addicted old woman, a hermaphrodite snowman…what more could they want? When they really fight the reading I tell them how sad it is at the end when they get blow up by a bomb…some kids actually read just for that and are disgusted to find out that does not happen--but they read it.
Societal factors: General lack of importance placed on education and reading.

ARCS: Attention: agree/disagree statements
Have students decide whether or not they agree or disagree with specific statements geared toward the themes of the novel.
Example: 1) In America, everyone has the same chance to succeed as everyone
else.
2) A hero is someone who succeeds at whatever he or she sets out to do.
Response is either in philosophical chairs or journal entries.
Relevance: Some of the relevance is the fact that it is a required reading for sophomore English students. But when we discuss the themes involved in the book, many students see that many ideas are still issues today.
Confidence: We read sections of the novel at a time answering study guides as we go.
Satisfaction: Many students feel great satisfaction having completed a book, liking the book and understanding the important ideas in it as demonstrated through various activities along the way and testing.

Teaching Philosophy

As a new teacher, my educational philosophy was vague. I believed that teachers were visionaries and facilitators and students were eager learners who would actively pursue knowledge based on desire, and if not that, then my enthusiasm and dazzling personality. I was wrong, and since returning from South Korea two years ago, my philosophy has changed. I now believe that students need to learn how to be resourceful, learn how to find answers that cannot be found in textbooks, learn to become independent thinkers, and finally, learn how to work. So, my educational philosophy is a work in progress.

Resourcefulness is a trait that seems to be lacking in today’s American student. Too often students rely on the teacher to point out the answer on a specific page, or if the information is not in bold print, then students stop looking for it. They cannot seem to think of alternative ways to find information. The ability to seek answers and gain knowledge are qualities students will always need to have and will remain a necessary component of a well-educated person despite our access to technology or lack thereof.

Thinking independently is another quality students must develop if they are ever to compete in a global market. Many of today’s students will be working in fields that may not currently exist. If they do not learn to think for themselves in a creative way, where will our next innovators come from? If we want the future generations to be able to find alternative fuel sources, be problem solvers and budget balancers (did I say that?), then they must learn to think of questions and answers that are not currently in textbooks or created and answered by a teacher.

Finally, students must develop a work ethic. The most striking difference between the American student and students I saw overseas is the ability to work until the job is done. Korean students are relentless workers. They are also interested in how to improve and constantly seek to increase the quality of their work. My students here resent having to work hard and most see little value in working to improve; they are working to just get it done. This is a deadly attitude. I think that the apathy toward learning is actually the greatest risk to students today. The ability to work hard, even when the task is not entertaining, has application and value that extends far beyond the classroom. Somehow a willingness to work needs to be revived within students.

Resourceful, independent thinking and hard working students do exist in my classes. My challenge is to shape more of them into that mold.

First blog posting

Greetings! This is my first blog post.