The key thing for that really stuck in my head this week is that we need to keep in mind that we are "educating kids for a future that we are not yet familiar with." This seems like an almost impossible task - how can we prepare our students for their future when we don't really know what that will actually look like? It seems that most schools today are still somewhat in the factory based learning phase dating back to the industrial revolution where we believe we need to teach our students using traditional methods, train our students to do well in exams and if they succeed then they should be able to get a good job. If we continue to do this then we are missing out on the talents of those who under traditional methods would not be considered academics or of high intellect, yet they still have much value and innovation to add to the world that we live in and our society. How do we reach those students?
To my mind being a teacher in a classroom is really a two-way street and we can learn as much from our students as they can learn from us. Relationships really are key. It is so important to build a good rapport with students and reach out to those who are on the outside, so that they can feel welcomed and supported and know that you are there to help them if they need it. At the beginning of the year I generally ask students to fill in an information sheet telling me a little bit of their language experience, if they speak a foreign language at home and what their interests are - I find this really helps me to hone in on their particular needs in the classroom. For example in my Spanish 4 class I often have native speakers who have excellent speaking and comprehension skills but they really need to work on their writing. Finding out this information when we are starting out is key to helping students work on what they find challenging and bring them up to the level they should be at. Students learn during a variety of ways and they should be taught using different strategies, and making curriculum appropriate and relevant to our students is paramount. Learning in classrooms today needs to be much more student centered and much less teacher led/focused. Students really need us to believe in them, because if we believe they can do something then they hopefully that will make them take that leap of faith so that they can. My lessons typically still are more teacher-led, but we do many different types of activities. I feel it is important to keep students moving and interested with short succinct assignments as opposed to those which are long and drawn out. We work on all skills incorporating speaking, reading, listening and writing into most class periods. In the upper levels I do have students collaborating on projects, and also they ask other groups about their presentations using google docs in the foreign language, but I am still working on group norms and what that looks like. One of the videos I watched showed great ways to keep kids focused and on task by having them let other group members know what they would be focusing on each week and what they had already achieved. They also had posters defining a timeline and what still had to be completed. I've been working on this for 23 years, but feel that there is still so much left to learn about teaching and education. It is a constantly moving feat!
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AuthorI am a French & Spanish teacher at Justin-Siena High School wanting to get new ideas to motivate my students. Archives
March 2019
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