Children Are People

"To be a "gifted" teacher is really just possessing the knowledge that children are people and then proceeding to treat them like people, loving them, and listening."

I have said things like this before; that the way teaching happens these days is not the way it should happen.  The best advice to teachers is to treat students like people.  This sounds like a "duh" kind of thing, but think back to your own school years.  How often were you treated like a cog in a machine, or a person of less value/standing/importance than the teacher, or simply one of the crowd of students?  I would bet that it happened, and still happens, more often than we like to admit.  Those stellar teachers who manage to break the mold end up being the most effective and the most loved.

The above quote is from Teacher Tom's blog, and I highly recommend reading more of his posts.  He teaches preschool in a play-based learning center.  I would love to explore how the ideals of play-based learning could apply to school-aged children and even higher education.  What do you think?  Leave your thoughts, ideas, and comments below.

[This is post #98.  We're getting close to 100!]

T Week

The letter of the week in preschool is "T", so tomorrow we're having a tea party.  We will:

Taste Tea, Tootsie rolls, Twizzlers, and tentatively, Toast Triangles

clean up with Thomas the Train "Towels" (actually napkins, but who cares?)
Tack the Tail on the Tiger
Tape the Teeth on the Tyrannosaurus Rex
win Toothbrushes as prizes

Any other ideas?

How's library school going?

Lots of people have asked me this recently, and I've been so busy and sick that I haven't been able to give a good answer.  But tonight's class made me realize some really neat things that I wanted to share.

Political Musings

A friend on Facebook linked an article on Eagle Forum about NEA campaign spending.  Although I have been a member of NEA, as it is required for student teachers in order to have liability insurance, I understand and agree that the organization's influence is extending too far beyond matters of education.  The NEA is often a bully and a monopoly; it seems to be more interested in supporting the status quo than making any progress.

However, after reading about Eagle Forum's mission, I became angry and sad.  Certainly, there are issues on which I agree with the Forum.  But there are other points in which I see intolerance, hatred, and most of all, irrational fear behind the Forum's goals.

I am usually not a very political person.  I don't pay much attention to politicians, and I don't identify strongly with one party over another.  But this website made me so upset, I had to say something.

Plans

I just registered to attend the Minnesota Homeschoolers' Alliance annual conference in New Brighton on Saturday, September 25th.  For readers who don't know me, I should point out that
1. I was not homeschooled; I was a (mostly) successful graduate of entirely mainstream public school
2. I have no children of my own, nor any specific plans to obtain them in the near future, because
3. I am not married, nor in a relationship likely to lead to marriage (okay, let's be honest: or any kind of relationship at all).

All of this might lead you to wonder why I would attend a conference on homeschooling.  As someone entering the teaching profession, I have come to dislike many of the precepts that public schools, and public school teaching, entail.  The emphasis on testing, especially, has (or originally had) a noble goal of making schools and teachers accountable for student learning, but this goal has been buried beneath a lot of finger-pointing ("Poor student performance is the teachers' fault!" "It's the parents' fault!" "It's the government's fault!") and the asinine and short-sighted idea of attaining "proficiency".

Anyway, specifics aside, the system is broken.  I do not want to be a part of a broken system; I'd be happy to try to help fix it, but I think it is difficult to get into a public teaching position without at least pretending to support the system, and then once in, it is tempting to support the status quo that pays one's salary.  I have been looking into alternatives to public school teaching, including charter schools, private schools (although these have their own issues), TRiO programs, and, yes, homeschooling.

I don't know how I could be of use to the homeschooling community, but I'd like to offer my services.  I would also like to see if anyone has done any thinking/writing/experimenting with incorporating homeschool learning and teaching styles into conventional classrooms.  That would be my ideal task; the students who most need our help are those whose family situations do not allow the possibility of homeschooling.  Those are the students I want to help become lovers of learning.

So, if anyone reading this will also be at MHA, leave a note and maybe we'll meet up.  If you're not going, but have some advice or insight on the whole "public schooling in the form of or modeled after homeschooling" idea, I'd love to hear it.

Book Review: What the Rest of Us Can Learn from Homeschooling

What the Rest of Us Can Learn from Homeschooling: How A+ Parents Can Give Their Traditionally Schooled Kids the Academic Edge
by Linda Dobson, (c) 2003

I ordered this book from Paperbackswap, thinking it would have some good ideas for me, a potential teacher, on incorporating homeschool-style learning in my eventual classroom.  And while it does have some ideas that could work in that setting, both in terms of philosophy and tangible activities, it leans a little more toward being a sermon on how homeschooling is the best for most children.  Dobson seems to take the view that if parents are reading this book, they are on the first step toward homeschooling.  I expected, from the title, that it was more for parents who are not willing or able to homeschool, but still want their children to enjoy the benefits of what Dobson calls the "learning lifestyle".

Again, I don't mean this as criticism, exactly.  Well, maybe a little-- of the slightly misleading title, at least.  But the ideas presented in the book are sound, if sometimes a little touchy-feely or obvious.  But maybe they're only obvious to me because I have encountered those same ideas elsewhere, either in my own experience or in formal pedagogy courses.

I found the chapter on study skills to be the most helpful at this point in my life/career.  While the other chapters included some really interesting games, activities, and events, most were geared toward the family.  As I am not married, nor do I have any children, those sections I will hold until another time.  But the study skills are applicable to all students, and could be taught (should be taught) within the context of the classroom.  ESL students in particular need the kind of structured note-taking and organizational skills presented here.

Grade: B.  Recommended for parents of young children in particular, as many of the games etc. are geared toward children under the age of about ten.

TED: Sir Ken Robinson

 I just Stumbled on this, and it says everything I've been thinking about our system of education.  It's very inspiring and I say "Hell yes!" to all of it.  Unfortunately, it offers little advice on how to enact such a radical change in model, which is my current conundrum.

My favorite quote: "A three-year-old is not half of a six-year-old."