young, naive, but wrong?????

As you read this keep in mind this is only my second year teaching and
I might be na=EFve but I am passionate about being or getting the best
out of teaching. We have to!

Where do we begin?

I along with a lot of my colleagues have become fed up with student
performance; this year has been especially bad losing my patience more
and yelling quite frequently. . I know, because I teach. However where
I seem to differ is where I place the blame. I blame us, teachers, if
students have gotten lazy and unmotivated. Teachers are worse; we have
become lazier and more repetitive in our techniques! Something that
worked last year may not this year. Follow my thinking?

Sure students tend to be lazy and unmotivated. But whose job is it to
motivate them, especially when kids do not see the intrinsic value of
education. Did you or I understand the ramification of education at 15?
I seriously doubt it.

What I do see is that teachers are more and more willing to blame
students for not succeeding. But let take a closer look at our
strategies as teachers. In general we are teaching the same way (sit
silently and soak up every word of my lecture) our great grandparents
were taught? You might try to argue with me that in the 1900's there
strategies worked and students succeed. I would argue with you that we
really don't know if they worked or not - there were no records
kept on graduation rate and average ACT scores like there are now. A
millennium has now past since 1900 and we are generally doing the same
thing... Regardless, is baseball played the same as it was? Are cars
built the same way? Are teenagers raised the same way? The answers to
ALL of these questions are no... See the problem!

What's changed; well a ton of things? Let's look at teenagers in
general. They are what experts call the instant gratification
generation. Well then there's no wondering why learning a topic and
then three weeks later you test over what you know doesn't provide
the stimulus response they want or need. Basically if I understand how
this works - teenagers can't see three days into the future and if
it doesn't impact them RIGHT NOW it just gets tossed aside. Let
change our instruction instead of one BIG test lets have a group of
smaller test every Friday or every three sections? Maybe that helps may
not but at least we are trying to help; let's forget the same
non-working strategy. Quit beating a dead horse over and over again.

We need a makeover. Teachers, students, schools. Let make everything
more real world applicable. Make textbooks and class rooms livelier.
How is it we can have a computer in almost every house but its dam near
impossible for a school to get enough computers for a lab but what's
worse get one in each classroom for a teacher to use effectively. I
will step back for a second and say I have a computer but I can't use
to help with projections or anything classroom useful for it. It does
the grades and that's about it.

I am also fully aware this requires money and a lot of it. I live in
lower socioeconomic town and understand how hard it is to find funding.
But do we not owe it to ourselves and our kids? Maybe that principal
can do without the extra zero on his contract or the teacher extra
hundred dollars. The only reason I say that is because of the
differential in pay between teacher and administrator is so huge. (That
will be talked about in another message)

Through my ramblings here is my dedication to this, I promise to teach
more excitedly! As I sadly foresee this year is almost over and I
can't go back in time. What does this mean? Well we've all seen the
movies that depict teachers impacting lives I say we make it reality
and just do it like; Dead Poets Society and Stand and Deliver and good
Willing Hunting! Why can we not??

I would suggest it's because teachers have become complacent and are
willing to blame students more and more for classroom problems. Well
they are just kids and so do we really expect them to understand the
value of education.

I should say not. So it's our job as teachers to motivate them to the
next level. Stand on your head, do jumping jack, run in circles, watch
movies do whatever humanly possible to motivate your students. Can we
AFFORD to do anything less?? The answer is simply NO.

If you read this so far you are good person thank you..

Comments id love to hear them...