Ok, that’s an alarmist title, because it’s only a few teachers, but these are some of the ones teaching my kids, and it’s mind-numbing. These are either things I heard myself at Back to School Night, or through my kids. And they’re just crazy!
So, what am I talking about? Let me elaborate:
So, one says that the way to learn science is to learn the formulas. Um, no. If you learn the formulas doesn’t mean you actually can solve problems. You need to solve problems with them! And, frankly, I don’t care if you memorize the formulas, if you look it up it’s just fine. But this is leading to a focus on rote memorization, not meaningful learning.
The same teacher also says that learning is individual, that students shouldn’t spend their time copying off the one person who does the work. What a horrible belief in kids! Yes, they might do it, but there are plenty of ways to structure the process so that learners have to contribute. And there are substantial cognitive benefits from learners working together.
This teacher did tout the success of her students on tests. Standard, abstract, rote problems unlike kids will actually face. Yes, the system is currently structured to reward that outcome, but it’s not what I want, nor what we should value. The fact that she believes standard test results means much of anything isn’t really helpful.
A second teacher seems to believe examples aren’t useful. This teacher is presenting the concepts in class, and then assign practice at home. What’s missing are meaningful examples of applying the concepts to problems. Um, examples help. The kids aren’t seeing the concepts mapped to concepts, nor the underlying thinking that makes examples useful! And can we say ‘flipped classroom’?
To compound the problem, the kids are supposed to have access to the corrected assignments, but the answers are being posted after 9PM at nite or later, when there’s a quiz the next day! This isn’t sufficient feedback to support comprehension and performance! Apparently this teacher isn’t convinced of the value of timely feedback.
Finally, I found out one of my kids was working this weekend on a coloring project. The teacher apparently is laboring under a delusion that in coloring in some diagram or map, the learner will internalize the spatial relationships and map those to the underlying conceptual relationships. But it’s a pretty low chance, and we have far better exercises to achieve that goal. My suspicion, of course, is that this is to have pretty room when parents visit, but if so, I think the teacher bloody well ought to buy decorations, and not keep my child from enjoying the weekend to make the teacher’s room pretty.
I really wish teachers had to read, understand, and apply cognitive apprenticeship. It, to me, is essentially the best model for guiding teaching. What I’m seeing is violating all sorts of basic learning principles.
Ok, let’s be fair, this is 3 out of 10 or so teachers, but they’re my kids, and it’s too many for any other kids, too. And I did contact the principal via email with all but the last, and he was kind enough to call me, but the end result is that nothing is going to change because there’s nothing really that can be done. There are teachers who care, and some who are doing great jobs, it’s just that for such a critical job of preparing the future, we really should be doing better. So, am I overreacting?
Of course you’re not overreacting.
Firstly, they’re kids. Kids missing out on real learning is a sad and terrible thing, and steps should always be taken to prevent it.
Secondly, they’re _your_ kids. Nobody expects you to be impartial.
But finally, the value of timely feedback goes both ways. We can wish that there was a better system for getting feedback to teachers in a non-confrontational, non-judgemental fashion that doesn’t bog them down in endless red tape. We can even try to solve that problem ourselves (but Woof! Not an easy one…) But in the meantime, we’ve got what we’ve got; you made a reasonable attempt to get the teachers some feedback via about the only channel you’ve got that isn’t likely to invoke a knee-jerk defensive response. (By which I don’t mean to paint teachers as unreasonably defensive, but nobody _completely_ likes an unknown outsider – no matter how qualified – coming in to tell them how to do their job.) Your kids are lucky enough to have support at home that understands (some significant portion of) how learning works; you could have taken the socially easy way out and just supported your own kids yourself, but instead you did the somewhat awkward thing and tried to help the teachers and the other students too. I can’t say I have much faith that your advice will be followed and things will change in any major way, but maybe at least the principal will pass it on and they’ll think about it a little. We can only hope.
I completely understand your concerns, and I am having the same types of experience with my kids’ education. I actually see something much more sinister occurring at a much higher level. My school system has adopted common core standards. This essentially reduces a lot of the curriculum to a color-by-numbers form to fill out from the government to teach each unique kid. Seriously- buy the standardized text with all the standardized exercises, and if you get a person able to administer it, you fulfill the common core.
I think this is sad- we are treating kids like standardized widgets- and worse, not respecting the powerful and important role that teachers play, and worst, not trusting them as teaching professionals to step up and fulfill that role.
Administration and legislators who don’t spend time with kids in classrooms are calling way too many shots where the frontline teachers aren’t allowed to do what is truly best for the kids. And if they aren’t good little soldiers doing exactly what is expected, they risk poor ratings.
So, I hear you on the case of some teachers really having some challenges with understanding their craft (it is a bit like ID’s selling learning styles and MBTI), but I wonder how much of this is actually a result of some teachers being trained (conditioned) to think within a box that doesn’t encourage learning about learning, but following processes, administering content, and processing tasks. I see a correlation between “Big Admin” involvement and “poor teaching” (even by instructors who even a few short years ago were really extraordinary).
I was thinking about your point on copying work. It is funny that some of the things that teachers ask students NOT to do in school is exactly what we want encourage in a work environment when they’re “all grown up.” No wonder we have adults that hoard their knowledge. We tell them not to copy or share in class because that is “cheating.” We don’t want them to work together because we want to make them get really good at memorizing everything? NO! Collectively these students would learn so much more… and I mean really learn- by application. Have them work together on projects and apply what they’ve learned. This whole concept of holding off on application until they’ve memorized some type of “foundation” is silly because the application is the glue that makes the knowledge stick.