A poster this morning suggested we take up a blog by a veteran teacher on how his eyes were opened after following high school students for two days.
After reading Grant Wiggins’ terrific blog, I agree.
A New Jersey educator and author, Wiggins shadowed a 10th grader and 12th grader, completing all the activities required of them, including taking notes and doing labs.
Credit: Maureen Downey
Credit: Maureen Downey
He offers some takeaways from his adventure, all of which he details with great wit. (Please read his full blog .)
Among them:
-Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.
-High school students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90 percent of their classes.
Wiggins has wonderful insights in the piece, including: You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long. I lost count of how many times we were told be quiet and pay attention. It's normal to do so – teachers have a set amount of time and we need to use it wisely. But in shadowing, throughout the day, you start to feel sorry for the students who are told over and over again to pay attention because you understand part of what they are reacting to is sitting and listening all day. It's really hard to do, and not something we ask adults to do day in and out.
His conclusion: I have a lot more respect and empathy for students after just one day of being one again. Teachers work hard, but I now think that conscientious students work harder. I worry about the messages we send them as they go to our classes and home to do our assigned work, and my hope is that more teachers who are able will try this shadowing and share their findings with each other and their administrations. This could lead to better "backwards design" from the student experience so that we have more engaged, alert, and balanced students sitting (or standing) in our classes.
I wrote a few years ago about following students in a rural district on the first day of school and how I sympathized with the fidgeting middle schoolers who heard grim lectures all day on expectations and rules. Like them, I was soon looking out the window at the beautiful, sunny day and wishing I could leap out of my seat and run free. With the exception of lunch and their class changes, those kids never got out of their seats for the entire day.
But – and there is always a “but” in education discussions – there are also dangers in free-range and student-led classes. In high school, one of my son's favorite teachers was a historian who lectured a lot. That led to complaints from parents about their kids being held hostage to 90 minute lectures. (The school had block scheduling.) The teacher told me he heard from the principal about the need for students to do a lot more of the talking in the class.
As a result, my son said he was spending a lot of class time listening to classmates who hadn’t read the material but still held forth on the topic. My son was among the minority who preferred the lecture format because the teacher knew his material and made it interesting.
A college student I met on a panel told me how much she missed her high school lit class because it was more therapy session than class. The kids would sit in a circle and discuss how the book related to their lives. Typically, she said the book was forgotten as the focus shifted to the real-life issues of the students.
Did she learn much American lit that year? “Not really,” she said.
My high schooler told me about a get-up-and-walk-around break in one of his classes where two boys left the classroom and never returned. (The class had a sub for the week who did not notice the absconders. We need to discuss subs some day soon. They seem to have a rough time of it, especially in high school.)
Obviously, classrooms need a balance. Classes shouldn't be airless chambers. But they can't necessarily be pulsating piazzas. Striking that balance seems a challenge to me. What do you think?
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