A Public School Teacher and Educational Technology Graduate Student's reflection of Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance , 7 Things You Should Know About Personal Learning Environments, and the 21st Century Learner...
It is assumed, and rightfully so, that the public education system that we currently have is not properly preparing the students within it for the world ahead of them. The two articles above discuss how student-centered learning through PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) can transform knowledge acquisition and create more powerful learners ready for the life ahead of them. Are our the students in our classrooms who have mastered the memorization techniques needed to ace the test going to be able to create the proposals needed to sell their company's products one day? In essence, our current system of education creates programed robots before the needed creative visionaries.
My state of GA has recently moved to standards based education as a format to guide all classroom learning. These specific and detailed standards are assessed on the basis of project-based outcomes that combine critical thinking and analysis. On the other hand, the state is still assessing and promoting/ retaining its learners on the basis of fact-based standardized testing. Therefore, a problem remains that the system is flawed. Until the two sides of the same whole are in conjunction, the detriment to education will remain. (This, I imagine, is all too common for other states as well.)
It is my belief that the problem has been exposed to the majority, but that we are too afraid of the unknowns of the solution to implement it fully. Allowing students to be in control of their learning as opposed to the educator in control, would require both self restraint on part of the teacher and individual learning outcomes that would seemingly be difficult, if not impossible, to adequately assess.
Traditional educators, such as myself, are fearful of this open world of student exploration because we can't control the outcomes, fit the assessments into a grade-able rubric of right and wrong answers, or maintain an orderly environment. Yet we can see that our goals are to prepare students for the world and their careers within it; thus, learning must be open to variation and foster creative outputs. We are fearful that our students might actually learn knowledge that we ourselves are unaware of, that we might be perplexed by their findings, and that we will not be able to fairly and adequately assess them for the course numerical grade. I ask myself and my colleagues- which comes with more stress: not being in control of our student's learning and the behaviors and emotions that accompany enlightenment, or knowing that we are not preparing tomorrow's leaders for survival in a critical and creative world that awaits them? I admit that I have always been that teacher whose students sit in rows and spend their days listening to lectures, taking notes based on my professional knowledge, and complete definitive multiple choice tests. My personal excuses are that my time is stretched too thin as it is with over a hundred pre-teens, where maintaining control and teaching facts for the state tests are my daily goals. I find that I rarely get out of this daily cycle and I feel that I am trapped in the public education system, where data and multiple choice standardized testing reign as most important. I see the vast benefits of learning environments rich in exploration and creativity and experimentation... but I am currently blinded to see how I can meet the required benchmarks set before me. I believe that the teachers and educational gurus of today can be richly enlightened by the need for Personal Learning Environments, but their hands still be tied. Implementation and change can not fully occur until this revolution becomes real to the federal and state educational legislators and departments who dictate the run of our public school classrooms. Freedom of teaching is something that, I believe, most teachers long for in their heart of hearts... but a longing stress that many have to release in order to work within the confined environment of the public school classroom.
With evidence that PLEs and the like might just be the answer to raising student life-long achievement rates, paired with the sad reality that I work under a rigid system of teaching to the test- I dig into the possibilities to find my temporary solution. (An enlightenment that I, admittedly, did not come to discover until I was deep in the exploratory learning of my current graduate school program.)
Being that I teach 11-13 year olds, they are not at all versed in thinking outside of the box/ abstract thinking. As an experiment, based on the reminders from my graduate studies to promote student creativity and product choice, I gave my 6th grade language arts students a writing assignment in which their parameters were only limited by their imagination! Many looked at me like I was kidding them and waited for the given topic, length, and methods of writing to be handed to them. I admit, that I too was a little scared by the possibilities; but I pressed forward in my experiment anyway.
Now, in the middle of my classroom writing experiment, I am getting all kinds of creative products! Some are creating science fiction while others write memoirs; some are lengthy while others are seemingly too short to be a complete narrative. I admit that I am a little fearful of how I will grade these creations... I guess it will be based on student work ethic, the writing process, exploration of the topic, use of detail, plot development, how well they hook me as the reader, and other skills that a published author would be reviewed on. How ironic that those type assessment properties bridge their classroom world to the careers of the authors they read. It is just this kind of implementation of PLEs that is actually possible for the standard k12 educator. We can give students choices, allow for them to be creative, and promote self questioning without stepping outside of the boundaries set before us.
It is these type of teacher-led taste-tests that can grow leading to students to make higher-level inquires about their knowledge, explore their own brain-based learning strategies, and ultimately co-create their learning environments... much like they will be asked to do when solving their own life problems and also the work they will have to do in a collaborative teams in their individual careers.
Our society has made us to desire the one clean-cut easy answer to solve the problem; but
this is ultimately impossible. These questions of an educational solution that I am grasping to answer can not fit within a precise formula or yes/ no critique. It is my belief that those who are enlightened must speak up, those who are ready for change must do it in their own environments and share their outcomes, and those at top who can change legislation and formats to listen to those on the field and follow the examples of proven success. Maybe, if all three mentioned parts work together, then education can match up with the 21st Century!
These mentioned elements of a change in attitude, a unified cooperation towards the same goal, and a fearless exploratory vigor are all necessary in the heart and minds of educators to effectively teach today's student.
Incredible:)
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