I find it hard to be a history teacher and not just stand in front of the class lecturing. That is what I have been exposed to my whole life. Perhaps required readings, where the students have to make their own opinions on historical subjects could be efficient. I have mentioned earlier in my blogs that having my students act out historical events could be help them understand how things happened back then. I would love to find online 3D models of historical towns and battlefields. I have also found that Google Earth is an amazing tool for referencing distances between places and even what places may look like today. With these tools and ideas, I want my students to live history as it was today and understand it with the fullest of their potential. Because we all know that understanding history helps keeps it from repeating.
Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home
Tom Johnson's post Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home shows a instructor that is not looking for the easy way out. Instead of trying to avoid a problem, he is trying to solve a problem. It sounds like he doesn't care too much for standardized tests to begin with, and isn't too crazy about the research done to say that students with pencils at home do lower on tests. If all this does add up to be true, he doesn't want the students to continue with the same ideology. The plan of not letting the students take pencils home only avoids the problem of students not knowing how to properly use the pencils. Mr. Johnson's argument is to train the students to learn with the pencils. That way the students will benefit later in life. Gertrude's plan will only delay the inevitable. Yeah it may, by some chance, help the test scores, but when it comes to the real world they are surely to fail, which is what we, as educators, are preparing students for.
What's up Joseph, my experience with "Do You Teach or Do You Educate was almost identical to yours. I have been pretty bullheaded on this whole class and like you I made a 180. Some of your ideas to make history interesting could keep students engaged and excited about class. I definitely like the id or acting out historical events and the 3D maps of battlefields and towns.
ReplyDelete"I have made a complete 180 in my train of thought." Good for you. You are learning!
ReplyDeleteYou did not understand that Johnson's (Spencer's) commentary was an extended metaphor or allegory in which pencils were computers. Reread the post with that in mind.