For the last month I have been challenged to engage in "a personal journey of exploration". Something I was "truly interested in learning". As I embarked on this "journey", I was to keep a journal of my experiences. So, this blog became the place to document and reflect on this journey. This journey can best be described as a cross-country trek in a klunker.
Sadly, one of he most difficult parts of this project was getting started. Selecting a topic. This was discussed in an earlier blog but as I continue to think about the process of acquiring and using information, I am recognizing as a professional educator that I have let the profession take control of my life such that I feel that I have no life at all. I recognize that I am really the only one to blame, buuuuut.... it is really frustrating to come face to face with the fact that while there are hobbies and activities I enjoy, I have let my profession consume not only my life but my energy as well. Professor Lamb in her article Strong Nests, Successful Students: Skills and Strategies for 21st Century Learning suggests as a new strategy for learning that teachers should "shift your focus from designing instruction, to creating learning environments that immerse young people in information and technology". I have spent a lot of energy designing instruction because administrators in my experience want lesson plans designed to accommodate the academic standards for a discipline and a classroom schedule that shows what specific standard is being "taught" and when.
NCLB is noble in it's purpose. While the concern is for every child to be proficient in reading, writing and 'rithmatic, in my opinion, it has become a major obstacle to the implementation of "learning environments that immerse young people in information and technology". Carol Ann Tomlinson in writing about the goals of differentiated instruction says, "Real learners understand how learning works. They know how to make sense of text, how to listen, and how to ask questions. They know how to gauge their work based on criteria for success. They understand how to capitalize on their strengths and how to compensate for their weaknesses. They know how to plan, follow through with plans, modify plans when necessary, and evaluate the effectiveness of their planning. Through those avenues, they come to believe that they are captains of their own fate as learners. Teachers who differentiate for student ownership of learning guide each student in developing these abilities."
From my observations of students and classrooms where I am employed, I would say there are no "real learners" either among students or faculty, myself included. (This is not a judgement, just an observation. In defense of staff, everyone works hard, is well intentioned and tries to do what they perceive is best for the students.) It is frustrating to know the potential is there, to believe in the ability of every student to learn and the ability of teachers to teach but see students in every classroom starring off into space, or having their heads on their desks while the teacher attempts to communicate the facts and stimulate discussion (and this in a "private school"). Students are bored, teachers are dissatisfied with student response in class and on assignments.
As a library media specialist I would love to think I am "strategically positioned", "a key team member" "working together with teaching colleagues to examine curriculum from the perspective of thinking processes:" (Violet Harada, Empowered Learning: Fostering Thinking Across the Curriculum.) I would like to think I can truly make a significant difference in a school's learning atmosphere but I really have my doubts. Teachers are driven to produce students that perform well on standardized tests. The academic agenda is governed by "academic standards". Student's don't feel they have freedom to pursue things that really interest them and teachers feel they don't have the time to teach anything more than the standards set for the discipline. Students are bored. Teachers are exhausted. Administrators in my school don't stay long. (In nine years I have worked under five principals.) We are constantly charting new direction. Nothing is consistent.
So you are asking and I am thinking, "what's the point?". I am trying to get there. The focus of all my formal education has been on content. Facts. I realize that it is only in recent years that educational research has shown that teaching content alone is not enough. However, I am a product of that era of instruction. I am presently in a situation where that kind of instruction continues. Several experiences have made indelible impressions on me and have shaped my attitudes as a teacher. First, an eighth grade teacher on the first day of class having never laid eyes on me before and after everyone in class had introduced themselves looked at me and said in front of the entire class, "You look like a troublemaker to me." Needless to say we had our problems. I have always preferred science courses over arts and humanities. It was not until I was a junior in college that I was given an assignment to design, execute and report the results of an original experiment in a physics class. I had plenty of laboratory experience but each lab exercise was prescribed. Then, as now, we were warned "follow instructions". "Do not attempt any experimentation without express permission from your instructor." I had no clue what to do for an experiment, much less how to design one. While still an undergrad, I worked one year as a newspaper photographer and another year as a lab tech in a bacteriology lab. After completing one photo assignment, I gave my film to the editor, told him I was done, he said I wasn't and I was to follow him. In 30 minutes he showed me how to process film and make prints. I was hooked. I sold my amateur radio equipment and began to buy cameras.
At the bacteriology lab, I would often come to work with my camera over my shoulder. The head of the lab took an interest in my interest in photography. He was a veteran photographer. He would look at my pictures and we would discuss each picture. He would show me his photographs, share photo magazines and invite me to meetings of the photographic division of the Kentucky Natural History Society. Not long thereafter, I was drafted. I joined the Air Force. A training instructor advised against my choice of a military medical career and suggested I take a "by-pass specialist" test in photography. I would be dismissed from a few hours of basic training. I agreed. I passed the test and became a military photographer. The military did not send me for additional training. I had never had formal training in photography, just the conversations with and the examples shown to me by Mr. Williams at the bacteriology lab and my brief newspaper experience.
From these experiences, I learned how the words of a teacher could impact a student's attitude and behavior, how little I knew about how science worked and how important it was to have or to be a mentor. This is the bottom line. No formal school experience taught me how to learn. Nothing focused on techniques to acquire and process information. No skills for critical thinking were taught directly. Yes, I did the research papers for English classes and for education classes but I was not required to pursue a topic of interest. Topics were assigned. I did not have to interact on a personal level with any topic assigned. In the military I worked for the Aero-Space Audio-Visual Service. I worked for a short while with a team that developed audiovisual instructional materials used in the training of pilots for the largest transport plane in the Air Force inventory. Here I got to use my photography for the noble purpose of advancing the knowledge of others. I loved it. I decided education was where I wanted to be. There is more to the story but for the purpose of this blog there is no need to go further. I did not learn the skills of questioning, reading critically, observing and being aware of the world around me, analyzing, synthesizing, and constructing knowledge during the formative years of school. For me formal education was about career -- collecting facts that would make me proficient in my profession. As I began to teach science, I soon learned that my students like me years earlier had no understanding of how science worked. As I came to understand the process and approached my teaching from the point of raising questions in young minds and teaching them the process instead of drilling content, I was soon at odds with administrators because I could never successfully bridge the gap between process and content. I knew I didn't remember facts that I had only heard and never used in an "authentic" situation. I knew that the process was more critical than the facts because I felt (before research confirmed) that good process would produce good and significant content.
The skills for information inquiry require time and repeated practice. Though I know and understand the process of information inquiry, it has been quite a different matter for me to implement personally. One reason being that I have slipped into a survival mode, failing to make and take the time to feed and nourish personal interests outside of the classroom. Old habits are hard to break. Students in the high school where I am employed do not have the skills of information inquiry because they are not being taught when they enter pre-school, kindergarten and first grade to build on their natural ability to learn. They come to school with questions. They come eager to learn. But learning comes today just as it did for me "back in the day" from the teacher's agenda to get the three Rs underway, not from the context of the questions that students brought with them when they came to school. Formal education in more cases than not in my experience has not done any favors for the students education believes it is serving because formal education while it talks about students first are focused on academic standards and standardized test performance. As teachers we recognize that students are struggling, we implement remedial programs but we fail to recognize that teaching and reinforcing the skills of learning as a means to academic content is what gives the student confidence to pursue knowledge. Without teaching the skills in an authentic context, we encourage boredom, mediocrity and often failure in our students. An occasional experience in inquiry learning is not enough to instill the skills necessary for life-long learning. I will address the specifics of my experience in the next posting.
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