Are you actually a teacher if you don’t have one hated educational buzz word? You know, that one that has been repeated at so many faculty meetings and professional development sessions that the word itself has lost all nuance and meaning? For me, it is the phrase “the real world” and how much emphasis is placed on having to “prepare kids for it.”
Math teacher, google consultant, and “edu twitter personality”, Alice Keeler, once tweeted this and it left me questioning my own classroom policies and expectations:
So, what is the real world? For kids, arguably, the real world is going to school for six hours a day, five days a week. That is their world and it is very much real. I’m not trying to argue that there is no value in preparing kids for life beyond schooling, but, as Mike Wesch points out in his TedTalk, What Baby George Taught Me About Learning, if everywhere else is the real world, then your classroom begins to feel like a strange fantasy land in comparison.
What I like about Wesch’s philosophy is that he takes an aspect of the “real world” -specifically, collaboration- and roots his action, lessons, and grading policies in the belief that students learn best when they are working together towards a shared goal. He argues that the conventional grading policy is a poor motivator for genuine learning because “D” and “F” students give up out of despair and “A” and “B” students give up out of complacency. Instead, he reimagines his classroom as a mountain where all students are climbers. Some students scale certain parts of the mountain with ease but those students turn around and help the others reach plateaus. In this way, the learning experience itself becomes the central focus for teachers and students.
Or, maybe the real A+ is the friends we made along the way.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteI love your ideas here! I love the quote in the middle because it is so true! As adults we now know the "real world" is all about figuring things out. We do that by asking questions, reading, talking to people and researching...something I feel I should focus on in my classroom!
This "real world" piece is exactly what Wesch is getting at with his sense that grades are the enemy of learning. And what kind of "real world" could we imagine if we valued collaboration and creativity over worksheets and tests?
ReplyDeleteI follow Alice Keeler too!
ReplyDeleteI really do like Wesch mountain metaphor. It's not the same for everyone but it is still the same mountain, just like you said "Some students scale certain parts of the mountain with ease but those students turn around and help the others reach plateaus." Learning should be done as a team!
Love your intro to this blog post. My word is data.....
ReplyDeleteI VERY much agree with you that the real world is everything we experience. School, college, etc. are all a part of the world we live in and try to navigate. You make a good point in saying that Wesch uses elements of our human experiences (collaboration as a concept, for example) and gives us ideas for incorporating them into our classrooms. Love your connections. Thanks for sharing!