Last Thursday we had a guest speaker for Ed Tech, David Theune, English/Language Arts Teacher from Spring Lake High School. The evening class follows a day in the classroom as student teachers. You can imagine the natural yawns, fatigue, and distractions. Mr. Theune's positive energy sparked my interest immediately. While introducing the class to himself through his students it was immediately obvious that he could be viewed as an educational innovator. His community inclusion not only reached outside the classroom for the benefit of the students, but incorporated local non-profits, to supply them with writers and researchers who share the same community. He referenced his teaching style with a profound statement, "Be the inspiration, not the information."
The positive support of technology in the classroom from experience also helped persuade me to reconsider my negative stance. Adding a purpose put value in the students' writing. This impacted the quality of writing. It was rewarding for all.
With high school math as my focus, I was looking forward to Mr. Theune's easy connection to mathematics. No such luck!!! It has become a response that I am hearing more and more frequently, "Oh, I'm not math." With this in mind, I looked for ways I could connect his experienced modifications to a secondary math classroom.
The value of students sharing previous readings on youtube could easily be translated to math. Presenting problems in front of the class at the whiteboard has been known as a common fear for math students. The chances of failing in front of your peers can be crushing. How about a different approach with sharing completed problems that can be well prepared without the intensity of cold-calling? Present your knowledge to another class through youtube and ask that they do the same. Judgement has been reduced by sharing the anxiety and quality of work has been improved through exposure. As Mr. Theune said, "Find an audience!"
Mr. Theune finished with several important references for addressing bullying. No matter what the level and intensity of it, the situation needs to recognized, addressed and eliminated. I am thankful for the well-researched book list he shared and look forward to reading his own.
Rachel, your comment "Adding a purpose put value in the students' writing." really struck me when I was reading your blog post. This is one of my goals as a teacher to add value to science content, help foster in students the importance of science both in school, but also, beyond in their personal lives and in the community. I was also eagerly awaiting how David would react to "How could this be applied to math?" and was equally disappointed in the moment that he said that "I'm not math!", but retrospectively looking back I am glad he did not respond on the fly, from looking at your post and others, his response I would love to sit down and think some things up has spurred several ideas including your creative idea of students sharing math youtube videos. I am amazed at the transferability of "find your audience" from English to Math, we as teachers are constantly (hopefully) thinking of our "audience", but rarely, or maybe just me, do we think about the student's potential audiences and the power in that for both the audience and the student.
ReplyDeleteRachel, I had the same reaction to application to other fields. I think there are possibilities to incorporating other audiences in my class, but there is not much wiggle room when it comes to writing a creative essay on the atom. Although there is not much creative writing in the STEM field, there are possibilities for creative thinking in our classrooms. I also think bringing parents to the classroom would be beneficial for STEM classrooms. In a math classroom, you could play "Are you smarter than a ____ grader in math?" and have parents team up against your students.
ReplyDeleteHi Rachel!
ReplyDeleteI could not agree with you more about the profound nature of Theune's quote, "Be the inspiration, not the information."
(T-shirt worthy phrase? I think so!).This is by far my favorite sentence to be uttered in a MAC class! Dare I speak for others when I say I think Theune captured what we have all been striving for, yet had trouble presenting in a nicely worded package?
Additionally, I am sorry to hear that you STEMers do not have as many widely available resources that speak to the practical application of the ideas/theories we discuss in our classes. Though I cannot necessarily provide you with any concrete ideas, I do wish to say that this does not worry me in the least because I know you (and the rest of the STEMers) are more than capable of coming up with your own brilliant ideas! I have the utmost faith that you all will be the driving force to implement more creativity into the STEM world! :)
So... MAC t-shirts with this on the back? (:
DeleteBut in all seriousness, this sentiment is key, in all disciplines. If all students needed was the information, then they would just pick up a textbook in September and turn in their dissertations in June. Knowing you, you will embody this sentiment with flying colors.
Rachel, thank you for sharing this! David's quote definitely resonated with me as well. At time teachers can forget to be inspirational as they focus more on giving students the information they need to pass the next standardized test. We cannot forget to continue to be inspirational to our students because if they don't see the spark in us then they are more likely to lose interest without even trying! As you mentioned, it might be more work to "find an audience" for your students but think of all the wonderful benefits this will bring. This can definitely be translated to other disciplines, especially in science. I actually (with the work of my mentor teacher) have talked about having our students create skits for the different phases of photosynthesis, the cell division phases, and much more! Most students love the camera but for those who don't we offer the option of having them read a story and draw pictures. This way all of the students' voices are heard. You can try to do this with math, have students tell a story about how to solve a math problem. I know that for STEM we have to dig for resources but if we collaborate on this we can reach resources quicker :)
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