Re-think teaching & classroom environments
If teachers are so crucial to the learning process, then why are home-schooled and students from one-room schools (Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana) so successful? In quiet, supportive environments children want to learn everything.
In crowded, noisy, distracting environments children seek safety or join in the commotion. Obviously our schools need to provide better student to teacher ratios.
Can anyone teach? Probably not, but some individuals teach better than others. In a classroom of 20, 25, or 30 students, there are good students, that is, good learners who succeed regardless of who is in front of the class.
That we have home schooled students who excel and individuals who complete the GED seems evidence that the learner is possibly more important than the teacher.
Does one environment work best for every learner? What do you think? and yet, we provide factory-type, assembly-line schools that try to move along all students at the same pace with the same textbooks and the same techniques. “You are nine years old? Well it’s time for you to be in fourth grade!” What?
Time to re-think teaching? Maybe it is time to rethink how learners are guided through the best way for them (unique individuals) to learn? Maybe it is time to do away with the assembly-line that tries to make all learners “one size,” because we all know that one size does not fit all.
This post was submitted by Michael Osterbuhr.
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