I agree with Garrett's premise. And I see that Garrett realizes how difficult it is for every educators to agree with his suggestion. It's not easy to think that the way someone teach for large number of years effectively could switch sides or transition to something new and unfamiliar, like student-centered teaching. And I think teachers struggle with this because in a classroom full of 20+ little ones, the teacher is usually the adult in charge! So as someone in charge, I can understand that it make sense to dictate a lot of major aspects of the classroom for your students. It would especially be difficult for well-praised veteran teachers who had stuck with the teacher-centered management and believe that it's the most effective way. Why should they try to transition to student-centered when they see and know that their teacher-centered way is the most effective? Well, I'm not sure how to answer that; like almost all of us here, I'm not a teacher yet and I don't have my own classroom. But I definitely think our generation of teaching is heading to a more progressive stance. We're looking to change, and we're looking to change for the greater goods. Which is why student-centered learning is becoming more and more of a thing for us to learn and integrate. Teacher-centered has its benefits, but student-centered helps the students and the teachers in a more long-term aspect as well.
Gus shared his "sweet-spot" on the continuum. Where is your "sweet-spot?" Why do you believe that location is the best fit for you?
My long answer is that, I may not be a teacher yet, but fortunately I've had a classroom full of students that I am in charge of (thanks to my daycare jobs over the year). Sure, I may not be implementing new idea on different activities the students could do and "teaching" them academic contents, but I am still the adult in charge of the classroom. I make sure that the students know it too. But then, that's it. I want students to look at me and understand that I'm the teacher, I'm usually in charge of "big decisions" like when we go outside or what we can eat for lunch, something students don't usually have control of. When a problem arise, big or small, a student came up to me for a solution. Instead I ask them, "I understand that this is a problem.. So what can we do about it?" Students aren't usually taken aback by that response, but they did have a moment of realization right there, as if they're thinking they have a choice in coming up of a solution too. Especially in early childhood, this is a work of developing their problem-solving skill and their ability to see things in different perspectives. A friend took their toy they were playing with, what can we do? Well, teacher could come in and intervene right away, put a stop to it once and for all. Or, a kid can go up to their friend, ask why they took it, then problem solve together in the fate of the toy that a kid was playing with that their friend too. So in my short answer, I see myself in between the student-centered and collaboration side, with a little more emphasis on collaboration.
Katherine,
ReplyDeleteI too think it would be hard for an experienced teacher to switch over to a student centered classroom but honestly I see teachers as life time learners and it is our responsibility to be doing research in to better strategies or methods in order to best support our students. So I think not even attempting to create a student centered classroom would really be doing a disservice to the students in that teacher class. but you are right, the newer teachers are becoming more progressive and maybe we can help be the teachers who enact the student led teaching or encourage it in a school community. I also liked how you talked about addressing the problem and then asking the students what they should do about it, I think this is so simple and such a great way to encourage student perspective and participation. Encouraging problem solving will help create better citizens in the long run!
Caitlin, thank you for your comment! I agree that teachers are lifetime learners. They learn how to work with different teachers, students, and everything else every year, which can be super challenging. At this time, we know that they're also learning how to navigate through online/distance learning before school open up, whenever that may be. Maybe it's in my experience that I've had some teachers that are all "my way is the best way" and while there may be more goods to their way of teaching than bad, I agree that exploring new/different ways should be more normalized. With that said, I think us future educators will be able to do that!
DeleteHello Katherine,
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you brought up that teachers get use to their ways of teaching and that is a great point to bring up about why they would want to change. I know teachers that I grew up with and they believed they were teaching the right way. They would just lecture us students with that occasional project. They told us we were responsible for our own actions and if you do not do what you are suppose to do then there will be consequences. So I am sure if we talked with them they would say well it works for majority of students there are just a few kids that will always do what ever they want to do and you cannot change that. I talked about how future teachers probably feel pressure from other teachers to probably teach the way they do and when we only learn from teacher centered classrooms it is hard to think of an alternative approach. I also brought up the fact that we were all probably raised up that way too. Listen to authority or else pay for your actions. Which there are something in life that are that way. However, I believe that teachers should be teaching children how to be good decision makers and the only way to do that is to give them the opportunity. If we decide everything for students how can we expect them to make good choices when they get older or to not look for someone to tell them what to do. This is actually something I believe a lot of people lack when they get out of high school. Schools are creating students who are looking for that next gold star. This breaks my heart. I'm going to stop now before I ramble on too much. So my question for you is what would you do if a school had a different climate than what agrees with your perspective of teaching?
Thank you for your comment, Zhana. You brought up a lot of good points and I can see how passionate you are about it! To answer your question, I'd probably subject to "their ways" first. Different climate from my perspective of teaching does not always mean a bad thing! I may learn something new from it and I may want implement that type of climate more in my classroom. However, if I tried it and I see that the students are struggling with it, I would then try "my way" and compare their assessments. For both scenarios, I can see me tweaking it up quite a bit too.
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