My Kind of Teaching

I'm coming out as a "progressive" educator, a "constructivist" even, who believes in developmentally appropriate curriculum and methods that teach "the Whole Child." Why all the quotation marks? Because these terms have somehow been run into the ground to the point of becoming almost unusable.

Maybe we need new words, maybe we don't, but my beliefs about how kids learn have not changed.  The world changes, kids change, tools change--and teaching changes (or should) to meet all of these shifting forces.  But kids still learn through their experiences.

Humans learn by doing and interacting with people and things over time. John Dewey said this almost one hundred years ago, and in 1916, Lucy Sprague Mitchell and the others who started Bank Street College began putting that vision into practice. They created a new model of teaching and began training teachers to observe and understand the cognitive and social development of children and to lead of the kinds of experiences that would help kids develop into strong, thoughtful members of society. (Read a brief history of Bank Street College of Education here.)

Checking out this 1940's video on Progressive Education (see below) sent to me by my colleague, Nancy Toes, I'm wondering, how much have we really changed? 

Important Note: Though I love the above screen shot from this video, the skills of a "progressive" teacher that successfully facilitates experiential learning are far more than just those mentioned.  

In 2011, children are still commonly lectured and drilled throughout their schooling.  The drills are slightly different.  There are more sophisticated tools now.  The content and the way we present it varies more, but the basic roles of the teacher as chief thinker and the student as follower of instructions remain far too prevalent and fixed in time.  

To my knowledge we have never implemented "learning by doing" with consistency, proper preparation, support and follow-through in public schools.  It is disheartening that today so much money and time is focused on whether students got the right answer on a test. And now we obsess over how many got that right answer? What percentage? How much did they grow since the last test according to the data?  All children are required to learn everything at the same time and demonstrate it in the same way--on the same day.  

Kids don't really grow like that.

The narrator in the 1940 video says, "The happiest moment for the schoolchildren of that sterner era [before progressive education] was when school let out."  For too many students that is still the reality, but it is one that can totally be changed--not with fancier drills, but with meaningful experiences. 

[Images are screen shots from the above video.]

Comments

[Stephen Lazar]

Too much conversation about education "reform" these days is only focusing on the container; not nearly enough is on what happens inside that container. Thanks for bringing this up.

[Anonymous]

I've been teaching for about 12 years now. When I graduated from TC, my advisor told me one thing that I took with me and that guides me still: If the kids aren't doing something, the kids aren't learning. He meant that the kids should never just be sitting there listening to me talk, they should instead be working on meaningful tasks used to facilitate learning and later demonstrate what they've learned. So I always plan like this: What am I doing?; What are they doing? The reform movement, unfortunately, has been very bad for progressive teaching because it is all about standardized testing or "accountability." It is not always easy to control for what a student has learned. Sometimes students learn something completely different than what I intended. Sometimes, a student learns what I wanted to teach days after everyone else. Does that make me a "bad" teacher? This is a phrase that gets bandied about a lot lately. Many times I learn from the kids. It's an interactive process. Teaching is messy - that's the beauty of it. The way kids learn is messy. I also want to point out that alternative certification programs have brought into the teaching field new teachers who are much more traditionalists overall. I think this is because there is so much emphasis on classroom management. There's less focus in these programs on philosophical issues of teaching and learning as well as developing rich curriculum because the teachers have to be up and running in just short weeks. So at TC we had lots of discussions about what the actual role of the teacher was and what the student brought with them into the classroom. We were encouraged to let the curriculum take care of the classroom management issues.

[David Williams]

The impression I received is that we have an "either or" choice to make. Either we are supporters of constructivist philosophy which of course includes projects, experiences such as field trips. In short, we are student oriented innovators. Or we are old fashioned and hopelessly out of touch and out of date educators of a bygone era whose primary philosophy is classroom order, followed by constant drill, practice and routine. This is a false choice. Sometimes project based and experiential learning are certainly very effective. Also, direct teaching can be effective. All of this depends upon your kids and what they are supposed to be learning and how this fits into an overall plan for the year. Yes, I am talking about appropriate context.

In short, I reject the idea that a good teacher is one who 100% supports a constructivist philosophy while excluding the value of direct instruction and occasional review and drill while at the same time I reject the idea that a good teacher is one who relies on 100% direct instruction. We need to use the most effective parts of both philosophies depending on the needs of our kids and what we are trying to teach.

[Ariel Sacks]

David, thank you for your comment. I agree with your point that the method has to fit the context and that there is definitely a time and place for occasional direct instruction and review and drill in a constructivist classroom. Nothing has to be 100%.

However, I also believe that a teacher is essentially either a constructivist or not. The problem is that most classrooms are not student-centered. The majority of classrooms are built upon a pedagogical loop of direct instruction, drill, assess, and review, peppered with occasional "experiences." The key factor here is that the chief thinker in the traditional classroom is still the teacher, and the students are trained to think like the teacher. Even when doing projects, students are asking, "what does the teacher want?" instead of seeing themselves as the chief thinkers--thinking critically, asking their own questions and making connections for themselves.

Being the chief thinker is an easy trap to fall into for teachers--I often catch myself at it. Partly this is because we lack strong models of constructivist teaching. I also think most teachers are more deeply confused about this than we let on. I have received very mixed messages over the course of my career about whether to create a student centered classroom or not. It's so much against the grain of the institution of school, which is hierarchical, with students at the bottom level. It's difficult to break out of.

Anyway. thank you for pushing me to think further about this.

[louboutins]

Being the chief thinker is an easy trap to fall into for teachers--I often catch myself at it.