Building a Better Teacher - NYT Article

Here is a link to the article I read today in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?pagewanted=1

After reading this article, I realized that the ideas I have about teaching might be slowly coming into fruition. It is very exciting that people are discussing these issues. I hate to sound cliche, but something has obviously had an effect on our children. Could it be technology? Could it be that technology is affecting the adults, those who are raising and teaching our children, in a negative way? With the amount of texting, facebooking, and everything else that lessens actual social interaction, even intelligent adults are forgetting the difference between they're, their, and there. I cannot believe the grammatical errors I see among some of my classmates. It is completely ridiculous that students in college misuse "are" for "our," which was typed in an email I received the other day. Mally's second grade teacher wrote in an email, "That is to funny!" To! And she is qualified to teach a classroom of children.

I have made three attempts at starting a book club. I have purposely invited friends who are not in school. Students, including myself, do not have time to read any additional material, which is why the books I chose were books for an independent study. I thought it would be a way to re-introduce community and to see my friends outside of facebook. One person joined. I invited over thirty people. On three occasions. Trying to get people away from the computer (and their gosh darn blogs!) is a complicated task. I believe that reading a book, a real, tangible book seems unnecessary to people. Why strengthen your knowledge when you can type any question you have into google and get an answer? Why challenge yourself to see things in another way when seeing things on twitter is working just fine? Why read a book and discuss it with your friends in order to gain insight and learn about their views and interests when you can go to the bar and simultaneously facebook on your i-phones?

I do believe I'm getting off topic here. Let's bring it back to the kids.

So, many people are wondering what the dilemma is here, is it the kids or is it the teachers? As you might be able to sense, I am blaming technology. I think it is affecting the adults who teach, raise, and influence our children. That is the issue. That is why we need to implement new teaching styles. Our teachers need to be educated not only on how to teach math, but how to manage a classroom, and how to engage children. And if they can't even engage their friends enough to join a book club, as I cannot, there is a problem.

One quote from Green's article states, "A teacher’s control, he said repeatedly, should be “an exercise in purpose, not in power.” When I see the homework that some children are bringing home, I wonder what the teacher's purpose is in that classroom. Does she know her purpose? Does she care? The definition of purpose is, the reason that something exists. Why does she exist? To teach 2 + 2? To hand out dated packets and dark brown crayons on Martin Luther King Junior Day? Please do not take offense, this actually happened, and unnerves me to this day! Is her purpose to call out questions and look for the correct answer? Or is her purpose to look for the incorrect answer and direct the classroom to deconstruct that answer? To challenge themselves.

For example, from Elizabeth Green's article:

"On one tape from that year, Ball started her day by calling on a boy known to the researchers as Sean.

I was just thinking about six,” Sean began. “I’m just thinking, it can be an odd number, too.” Ball did not shake her head no. Sean went on, speaking faster. “Cause there could be two, four, six, and two — three twos, that’d make six!”

“Uh-huh,” Ball said.

“And two threes,” Sean said, gaining steam. “It could be an odd and an even number. Both!”

He looked up at Ball, who was sitting in a chair among the students, wearing a black-and-red jumper and oversize eyeglasses. She continued not to contradict him, and he went on not making sense. Then Ball looked to the class. “Other people’s comments?” she asked calmly.

The Sean video is a case in point. Ball had a goal for that day’s lesson, and it was not to investigate the special properties of the number six. Yet by entertaining Sean’s odd idea, Ball was able to teach the class far more than if she had stuck to her lesson plan. By the end of the day, a girl from Nigeria had led the class in deriving precise definitions of even and odd; everyone — even Sean — had agreed that a number could not be both odd and even; and the class had coined a new, special type of number, one that happens to be the product of an odd number and two. They called them Sean numbers..."

For a teacher to be able to improvise in that manner is a great skill. I don't believe it can necessarily be taught. I think it comes from a desire for children to learn. It is hard work to teach in this way. You stay up late creating a lesson plan only to disregard it when it is not fully immersing your students. It involves taking risks for your students. To devise a lesson plan and then to stray from it basing your decision entirely on your student's interest takes pride. Pride in your classroom and pride in the students that you are teaching. It takes the ability to let go of the structured diagram of teaching.

One first year teacher came up with a concept that addresses the notion of "the correct answer." It is described below from Green's article:

"The concept is deceptively simple: A teacher should never allow her students to avoid answering a question, however tough. “If I’m asking my students a question, and I call on somebody, and they get it wrong, I need to work on how to address that,” Bellucci explained in February. “It’s easy to be like, ‘No,’ and move on to the next person. But the hard part is to be like: ‘O.K., well, that’s your thought. Does anybody disagree? . . .I have to work on going from the student who gets it wrong to students who get it right, then back to the student who gets it wrong and ask a follow-up question to make sure they understand why they got it wrong and understood why the right answer is right.”

This is exactly the way that children are able to learn, and to get excited about knowledge. By disregarding "the correct answer" and allowing children to openly discuss and be confused enables emergence to happen in the classroom. This is how the students are able to find the conclusion to a problem by using each other as support. I have yet to witness this in a classroom, but I imagine it is an amazing sight to see. I hope to teach students in this way. It makes me incredibly happy to know that some students have the opportunity to grow, emerge, and succeed in a classroom like this.

The ending paragraph of the article was completely inspiring,

Lemov, for his part, finds hope in what he has already accomplished. The day that I watched Bellucci’s math class, Lemov sat next to me, beaming. He was still smiling an hour later, when we walked out of the school together to his car. “You could change the world with a first-year teacher like that,” he said.

I cannot wait to experience the joys, chaos, anxiety, happiness, and everything else that comes along with being a first year teacher. I cannot wait until I have the unique opportunity to encourage a classroom of children to be confused, to rely on each other's confusion, and to never think twice about voicing their own desires.