Re: Supporting vs stifling curiosity

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 06:48 -0500 02/11/2002, Ed and Laura Eckel wrote:

> I wonder if the teachers everyone refers to are really such awful
> teachers or human beings.  Teachers in most schools are bound by
> scope and sequence rules and are overworked.  If you could not
> guarantee when and where an inquiry answer to a question would "come
> out" and your superintendent would replace you with *anyone*, and
> you had kids at home to feed, how would you "teach"?  If you had
> only 20 minutes a day to do something other than be responsible for
> students immediately in front of you, and if you were required to
> grade and return each students work in a quick turn around yourself,
> how would you modify your teaching?
>
> My point is that the teachers out in the world are not incompetent
> hacks.  They are working within a system that is not particularly
> sympathetic to your concerns.
>
> If you want to do something, consider working to change the system.
> I recommend two points of pressure.  First, go after the policies in
> your local communities that lead to the local teaching conditions.
> Second, work to change the near universal post-secondary institution
> infatuation with standardized test scores.  If you don't want to do
> something, well, remember that a fraction of the readership of this
> list are teachers in the situations I describe and may not find your
> words particularly
> collegial.

Your points are all well taken. I didn't mean to come across as
condemning teachers but in blaming administrators for putting their
teachers in situations where they have no business being, and many of
the teacher preparation institutions that do not adequately prepare
the teachers for what they will be expected to do.

The issue of teacher workload is certainly relevant to this
discussion. The powers that be seem to have absolutely no
appreciation for the amount of time is takes to adequately prepare
for a class, and how much time must be spent on grading student work
and dealing with student problems, nor just how difficult it is to
have students learn anything through directed activity when the class
size is so large that the teacher has essentially no chance to get to
each student for a reasonable amount of time in each class. All of
these problems contribute to the attitude of defensiveness that many
teachers fall into.

But I think that the things that have been talked about here are
mostly those things that a harried teacher can use to ease the stress
while at the same time trying to promote a climate of learning in the
class. Clearly the amount of authority the teacher can give up an any
given class will vary not only with the age of the students but with
the maturity and personality of the group. With some groups, a laid
back, "let's learn this stuff together" attitude will lead to a
wonderful year of learning. With others that same attitude will be a
disaster.

The trick is to create a relaxed learning atmosphere without giving
up the authority required to run the class the way you want it to be
run. That requires some skill on the part of the teacher, regardless
of the level of preparation in the subject.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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