"Is the Great American Teacher Dead?" Finding a balance between Ben Stein and Jack Black
As I am finishing up my undergrad in Spanish and TESOL education at BYU-Idaho, I am enrolled in an on-line TESOL class that requires me to blog about the things that I am learning. This is a pretty neat opportunity to share my learning experience further my discussion outside of the classroom.
This week I was assigned to read an article by one of my most beloved professors here at BYU-I, John J. Ivers. The article "Is the Great American Teacher Dead?" (link at the bottom) discusses the idea that teachers in the United States have lost a love and passion for teaching their students, and have transformed into some sort of classroom management dictators. Which, to be completely honest, I would have to agree.
This has been a challenge for me during various practicum that have placed me in the public schools of Idaho. I have a desire to not only teach the students things from my content area, but also life lessons. I want to treat the students with the respect that I would like them to give me, and teach them responsibility. But, I also want to have fun with them and allow them to trust and confide in me with their struggles in life. Adolescence is a time where you definitely feel like everyone is against you. I do not want to add to that.
John J. Ivers offers a beautiful list of what he considers to be strategies for good teaching:
1. Positive teacher-student relationship
2. A good “delivery”
3. Edifies rather than damages a student’s self-concept
4. Clarity (through the use of many examples and stories)
5. Encourages deep and critical thinking
6. Variety instead of monotony (do not forget the TenMinute Rule)
7. Grading and workload is generally perceived to be fair
8. Enthusiasm and zest for the topic
9. Meaningful to real world problems
10. Potentially transforms one’s world view from one of uncritical acceptance of cultural dictates to one of deep, reflective, and compassionate thinking
This is an inspiring list of things that I wish to implement in my classroom. However, I have heard many starkly different philosophies about teaching style and classroom management. How can I find a balance between the organized chaos in Jack Black's "School of Rock" classroom, and monotone classroom of Ben Stein in "Ferris Bueller's Day off"?
I would love to hear feedback and personal experiences.
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I like your post is woderful I agree with you when read the list is great because is excellent strategies for good teacher this article help our improve.
ReplyDeleteI agree the list is amazing but your question is deep. How do you find balance between a really cool class but that it does not get out of control or that learning really is going on. I recently saw the movie The Ron Clark Story and I got some good Ideas from him. I am firm believer of Rules and consequences. I think that you can set some rules and also let the students set some also with their consequences. Another thing I do is to give students rolls or responsibilities in the class. This I can expand on a lot more but just as an example one rule was that everyone participates so in class they had to use their chips which counts how many times they participated. One of the students was in charge of the consequences not me. So then I was not the bad one and also because they had set their own consequence not me.
ReplyDeleteHave you been able to observe a teacher who finds balance? One who engages students in the curriculum, but also maintains a great relationship? What does that look like?
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