If you were an education major, you wrote a philosophy of education. It was likely a very long examination of your beliefs about the purpose of education; but if your was like mine, it was likely not very practical. I found mine a few years ago and laughed a lot about how idealistic I was. I don't disagree now with anything I said in it. I am just aware of the reality of dealing with students now than I was in college.
Your school has a mission statement, and you should be on board with it, but how you execute your school's mission will look different in your classroom than it does in the room next door. It will look different in my 7th-grade science class than it does in a senior calculus class. Even with teachers who teach the same grade and subject, it will look different because teachers are individuals with different personalities and philosophies. After reading Dave Stuart, Jr.'s book These Six Things, in which he advocates having a "Mt. Everest statement," I decided to write a classroom mission statement for myself. I've had mine on the wall for a few years now, and I thought that perhaps telling you about mine would help you think about yours.
I began with the mission statement of my school. It says, "GRACE Christian School is a loving community that academically and spiritually equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ." Since there are three verbs there, I started with them.
Equip - Make you the informed thinker you need to be to make good decisions.
We make decisions all day every day. Some of them require little thought. (Do I prefer to use a purple pen? Would I like chicken or tacos for lunch?) Some require a lot of thought. (How do I plan to cover the remaining material by the end of this semester? Who do I vote for? Which insurance plan do I choose?) Some decisions require the input of an expert who is more informed in their thinking than you are. (Should I social distance? If I decide to become vegan, what are the issues I need to think about?) Being educated does not mean you know everything, but it means you have been taught to think and who to listen to.
I was reminded of the importance of this yesterday. I was scrolling through Twitter and found an argument between an American man and an Australian man about mask-wearing. The American man said, "I've done my own research and . . ." Now, I'm wise enough not to have jumped into this argument, but I what I wanted to say was, "Where did you get your epidemiology degree?" It means nothing to "do your own research" if you have little to no knowledge of the thing you are researching. That's why people get medical degrees rather than reading WebMD. You can look at a graph and attempt to draw conclusions, but a person with knowledge can interpret it more accurately. Statisticians can show you data and give you three different interpretations depending on how the data was collected and which tools you use to interpret it. The sheer volume of information available to us has led some to believe that education is irrelevant. I think it makes it more critical than ever because Google doesn't have wisdom or judgment.
Challenge - Ask you to perform better than you think you can at things you don’t think you are good at.
Students are capable of more than they think. By middle school, many have decided that they are bad at math or that they don't like art or that they are "visual" learners. To that, I say, "We'll see." We are demonstrably terrible at judging our own abilities. There's a move among educators right now to base all their decisions on feedback from students. I want my students to have a voice, but the idea that I should do everything they want is silly because they don't know what they need. As a student, I didn't know I loved physics; and I certainly didn't know what the best way for my teacher to teach it to me was. Mr. Barbara knew physics, and what he did made me love and made me want to work hard at it. The value of the teacher is undermined if we lead by survey. In almost every survey of study strategies, students rate the highest those things that research shows to be the least effective (re-reading and highlighting). One of the top strategies, retrieval practice, is low on those student lists. They don't want to do it because it takes more effort, but I don't expect a middle schooler to know current brain research, which is why the professional development of the teacher matters so much.
My 8th-graders are shocked at what they can accomplish. I'm not. They need to be pushed and given strategies, but if they employ those strategies, they can improve at anything. Growth mindset doesn't have to mean that we believe everyone is equally skilled naturally. Talent does exist, so you are going to have some students who are naturally better at some things. Growth mindset means believing that I can be better at anything than I currently am if I strengthen my brain the same way I would strengthen a muscle.
Inspire - Ask you to look beyond the grade, the curriculum, and the tests to see what you can do with your education.
I believe in assessment and grades, but education isn't, at its core, about the grade. I love my curriculum, but I care more that students build skills than that they remember every detail of my curriculum. I want them to learn perseverance, following directions, communication, teamwork, individual responsibility, reading comprehension, social awareness, kindness to the person sitting next to them, and problem-solving.
I have often written about conversations I had with my own teachers that still influence me today. I am conscious of many of those moments, and I am certain that there are moments of which I am unaware that influence me today as well. I know that each class I took changed me in some way, which is why I bristle at those who say nonsense like "I never use Algebra in life." Setting aside that you do, what else did you learn in that class besides the math? What you learned in that class does impact you today, whether you are aware of it or not. I want my students to think about what education is building in them and how they will use it to "impact their world for Christ."
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