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Teacher Poses as Student and is Shocked by What She Discovers
Sigmund Fraud
Waking Times
Have you ever considered why so many grade-school students are stressed, bored or uninspired when it comes to learning. Perhaps they enjoy school, but it is often for reasons such as friendships and extracurricular activities, and rarely because of academics. Perhaps if teachers had a better understanding of the learning experience from the students’ perspectives, they might want to revisit how they approach teaching. One teacher, Alexis Wiggins, who works for a private American International School outside of the US, conducted an experiment that did just that – it put her in the role of a student as she shadowed two high-school students for two days. What she learned was shocking.
After 14 years of teaching, Wiggins had started a new position as a High School Learning Coach, who works with teachers and administrators to improve the outcomes of student learning. To train for the role, Wiggins shadowed a 10th grader for a full school day, and a 12th grader on another day, doing all of the work that the students were doing.
“I waited 14 years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. It was so eye-opening that I wish I could go back to every class of students I ever had right now and change a minimum of ten things – the layout, the lesson plan, the checks for understanding. Most of it!”
Wiggins came back with the following key takeaways after her experience:
1. Sitting All Day Long is Exhausting
Most schools follow the traditional format of putting kids in chairs at a desk as the teachers lecture at the front of the classroom. All day long the students are expected to sit at their desks, aside from the short walks between classes and during bathroom and lunch breaks. Here’s how sitting all day made Wiggins feel:
“In every class for four long blocks, the expectation was for us to come in, take our seats, and sit down for the duration of the time. By the end of the day, I could not stop yawning and I was desperate to move or stretch. I couldn’t believe how alert my host student was, because it took a lot of conscious effort for me not to get up and start doing jumping jacks in the middle of Science just to keep my mind and body from slipping into oblivion after so many hours of sitting passively.
I was drained, and not in a good, long, productive-day kind of way. No, it was that icky, lethargic tired feeling.”
It is unlikely that students absorb much of the content that they are being taught if they feel lethargic and exhausted, especially towards the end of class and definitely by the end of the day. So what would Wiggins change, in addition to giving students the freedom to stretch and have some movement time at the start and end of class?
“I would… build in a hands-on, move-around activity into every single class day. Yes, we would sacrifice some content to do this – that’s fine. I was so tired by the end of the day, I wasn’t absorbing most of the content, so I am not sure my previous method of making kids sit through hour-long, sit-down discussions of the texts was all that effective.”
2. The Traditional Classroom Format Does Not Engage Students
It is unlikely that most students will have the chance to engage in the learning process during each class period. Wiggins found that during approximately 90% of each class, high school students were sitting passively and only listening and taking notes.
“I don’t mean to imply critically that only the teachers droned on while students just sat and took notes. But still, hand in hand with takeaway #1 is this idea that most of the students’ day was spent passively absorbing information.
I was struck by this takeaway in particular because it made me realize how little autonomy students have, how little of their learning they are directing or choosing.”
Learning happens in many different places and in many different ways. But in a traditional school, the reality is that students do not choose or decide what they learn or how they learn it. Teachers often plan the class around the material they are expected to cover, often outlined by a general curriculum and preparing students for standardized testing.
After her experience, Wiggins identifies the importance of using the students’ general questions and areas of confusion as a way of engaging conversation, increasing enthusiasm and collaboration, and encouraging autonomy. One of Wiggins’ suggestions about making the schooling experience less passive would probably really appeal to many high-schoolers sitting in classrooms right now:
“I would… set an egg timer every time I get up to talk and all eyes are on me. When the timer goes off, I am done. End of story.”
3. Students are Made to Feel Like a Nuisance
Considering that students are expected to sit and listen all day, it is only expected that they will get fidgety, talkative or distracted. In response, teachers are often reprimanding students, telling them to be quiet and pay attention…over…and over…and over. Wiggins also noticed that teachers are often sarcastic and even sometimes condescending, which is completely damaging to the experience of learning.
“…when I was the one taking the tests, I was stressed. I was anxious. I had questions. And if the person teaching answered those questions by rolling their eyes at me, I would never want to ask another question again.
I feel a great deal more empathy for students after shadowing, and I realize that sarcasm, impatience, and annoyance are a way of creating a barrier between me and them. They do not help learning.”
Teachers’ attitudes and interacts with students have a lot to do with the teachers’ personalities and desires for the types of relationships they want to create with their students. It is often difficult to have endless patience, especially when it comes to children and teenagers. But there are methods that can be implemented that may help teachers realize just how often they show annoyance and irritation.
“I would make my personal goal of “no sarcasm” public and ask the students to hold me accountable for it. I could drop money into a jar for each slip and use it to treat the kids to pizza at the end of the year. In this way, I have both helped create a closer bond with them and shared a very real and personal example of goal-setting…”
Wiggins’ on-the-job training turned into a very insightful experiment with insights that could lead to more productive schooling techniques. It is clear that if we don’t evolve the way we approach schooling, we will continue to limit the potential of blossoming minds and even diminish their desire for learning and discovery.
You can read the complete summary of Alexis Wiggins’ experience here: http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran-teacher-turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/
About the Author
Sigmund Fraud is a survivor of modern psychiatry and a dedicated mental activist. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com where he indulges in the possibility of a massive shift towards a more psychologically aware future for mankind.
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
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The post Teacher Poses as Student and is Shocked by What She Discovers appeared first on Waking Times.
Source: http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/10/30/teacher-poses-student-discovers-3-shocking-truths/
Wow, spoken like a liberal.
I have to say, learning is either a love or an annoyance, and nothing you can say or do really can change this in a child, regardless of the acrobatics you arrange for them to do.
At 16, I had potential to be valedictorian but instead was pretty-much the class clown. My potential A’s were B’s and C’s. Why? Because it is more important in class to ‘bring all students up’ than to ‘focus on the bored, gifted ones’ when you are in sheeple public school. The result? I joined the Marines instead of going to college.
I tried college at 19, but did miserable. I had so many other things going on. I was in the Corps, I was active, going places, doing things. No time.
At 24, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to do this all my life, and now I’m thinking about a good job when I get out of the service. I now WANT to go into college and desire to do well. I take 18 credit hours, declare an engineering major, and walk out of a B.S. in Engineering with a 3.2 GPA from an ABET Engineering school in only 3-years. Not bad for ‘the class clown’. I finish my first Masters Degree in 2-years with a 3.54 GPA only 4-years later.
By 35, I had 227 credit hours, and held an Associates, a Bachelors, and two Masters (one being an MBA) degrees, with no GPA below 3.2. This was all done before the year 2000, back when you went in, sat in class, got bored, got tired, dozed off, etc. No, the schools haven’t changed, if anything they are ‘softer’, ‘easier’, more ‘accomodating’. Then, you have some liberal pantywaist wanting to make it about aerobics and loss-of-curriculum for the sake of ‘attention buy-in’ from those who are too bored, too lazy, too childish to pay attention.
Hey, heads-up liberals – if you WANT to do better in life, YOU WILL PAY ATTENTION. If you want a better job, more education, part of that is SACRIFICE. Don’t insult me or those like me that came before, by making the new ‘Master of Science in Engineering’ equal to a lowly Associates in Engineering Technology when I was in school. If you want the accolades, you will WORK FOR IT. Even in school, part of the ‘work’ is staying attentive and studying. Partying until 1-AM and texting and dating do NOT go well with good grades, no more than ‘running around with fast cars and booze’ did for us 40-years ago!
If they can’t stay awake in class now, how do you think they are going to stay awake in a managers’ meeting in business? Do you really want your doctors or lawyers stopping their work on you, for you, so they can jump around for a while to ‘keep their attention span’, or would you rather that someone like that NOT BE OPERATING inside your body cavity to begin with?
Once again, you can give a set of tools to any monkey – but will they really know how to properly use them as they were meant to be, if you do? Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t give $50,000 tool sets to monkeys to start with. Wait until they become responsible people that can ask for a tool set, to begin with – and you will have much better success when they have completed their training.
Just an idea.