What are you doing in the classroom?
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What are you doing in the classroom?
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New Students are coming Elementary Jr. High
I've spent most of my career in higher education with the assumption that I was getting paid to organize and present information to students. [Karl Smith, Professor of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Minnesota] - Response quote
Professors are almost the last members of society who think they can afford to train themselves[and their students]when young and then pursue a single linear career for the whole of their working lives. [James J. O'Donnell, Professor of Classical Studies, Univ. Pennsylvania] - Response Quote
...most professionals, locked into a view of themselves as technical experts, find nothing in the world of practice to occasion reflection, [having] become too skillful at techniques of selective inattention, junk categories, and situational control....a wall against innovation, creativeness, revolution, even against new truth if it is too upsetting. [mishmash from David Orr, Donald Schon, and Abraham Maslow]
...the traditional model of... education simply was not preparing young men and women for the rapidly evolving nature of the disciplines....where the information they get today is simply not valid tomorrow, where the need is not simply to have today's information, but to know how to generate the new information, to check it, to critique it, to research it, to do all of those things that a practicing scholar of a field has to know how to do,... - Continuation
Question 1: How do you teach in the classroom?
Step 1 - By yourself list on a piece of paper the teaching practices you currently use in your classroom and then rank those practices and put a % of time spent on each practice.
Step 2 - Pair up with one other person: Explain your teaching practices to your partner. The "listener" should try to help the "speaker" tease out and flesh out current practice in the classroom.
Step 3 - Report back to the entire group.
Question 2: What are the objectives you are trying to meet in the classroom?
Step 1 - By yourself list on a piece of paper what you perceive as the 10 most important outcomes for students leaving your class.
Step 2 - Form 4 groups of 5 persons each and from your lists select out the 5 most important "common" outcomes from all of your lists.
Step 3 - Report back to the entire group.
References:
O'Donnell, James J. 1998. Avatars of the Word, From Papyrus to Cyberspace. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA.
Orr, David. 2000. Ideasclerosis: Part Two. Conservation Biology 14(6): 571-1573.
Palmer, Parker. 1997. The Renewal of Community in Higher Education. pp 1-18, IN: Wm. E. Campbell and Karl A. Smith eds. 1997. New Paradigms for College Teaching. Interaction Book Company, Edina, MN.
Smith, Karl A., and Alisha A. Waller. 1997. Cooperative Learning for New Teachers. pp. 185 - 209 IN: Wm. E. Campbell and Karl A. Smith eds. 1997. New Paradigms for College Teaching. Interaction Book Company, Edina, MN.
