Many of us fault ourselves for not being good enough teachers, for not doing more. Now, I can see that the culture that exists in our schools of a lot of the kids being just bored out of their minds in many classrooms has been a major contributory force in this problem of me worrying too much, and working too hard over the years.
If this does not describe you, stop reading. It’s a personal blog, and I am not claiming this as necessarily true. I just do well when I see thoughts in words. And I am really beginning to see that there is more to the challenge of teaching than just driving myself to be better and better and better and better and better and better at it.
Could it be that a lot of the challenge of becoming a real teacher is actually linked to the culture of submission, built around standardized testing, that exists in our schools, and is not just linked to a perception that I am not doing enough in my classroom, and that I need to do better?
Could it be that zombies are harder to teach than kids who haven’t had their minds ripped out of them by teaching that has been driven by and geared to standardized testing? Do you mean, Stuart Smalley, that I really am all right? That it’s not me but the culture around me? I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before. I think I get it now. I’m o.k…. I’m just fine.
When we undertake the magnificently freeing challenge of embracing this new way of teaching as a way to reach and teach our kids, maybe it would be good to try to keep in our minds that many of our kids have forgotten how to play, and that we need to retrain them by becoming masters of play as well as capable deliverers of comprehensible input, both within a strong framework of the right rules. It’s no small task that, but we can do it. As I see it, we have no choice.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
