I read the piece that POT wrote, but my comment didn't go through.
I agree all methods have a place, and hate it when someone dictates a method. I have also adjusted the workshop model to fit the needs of my students. And if that means using chalk and talk, fine.
The thing with differentiated instruction is that the way the DoE and principals use it, isn't the way it was originally intended. The DoE only wants passing grades, whereas DI was to help a student improve.
Today, student improvement is taking a back seat to passing test scores.
Progress for some may not necessarily mean passing scores. Children learn at different rates and by different methods. The DoE has this "one size fits all" mentality.
I was going through my old files when I came across the old CIMS math curriculum. Guess What? September was Review work. This year we started off with all types of graphs.
Cims just used to teach one graph at a time. While I hated the Cims calendar because not all content can be taught in a day, I liked the way the topics were laid out.
There is a seminal scene in Apollo XIII that says alot about our society. The engineers are trying to figure out how to stop the buildup of CO2. They've decided to fit the round scrubbers from the capsule to the square valves in the LEM. A large group of guys in white shirts, glasses and pocket protectors are in a room and a guy comes in and says" We've got to make this fit this and these are the things we have on hand to work with." They succeede. They were all taught by chalk and talk. Some of them probably had had screw down desks and ink wells. Yet they took us to the Moon and we have yet to return.
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. ~
Anatole France
"Apparently, the only possible way for anyone to learn anything is the workshop model, in which you the teacher talk for a maximum of ten minutes, and then have the kids discover the meaning of life in small groups."
I had just posted the quotation of the week, and you come up with this. Sigh.
All anybody talks about in my school is differentiated instruction. Our new mantra is, "When teaching the same thing to all the kids at the same time, 1/3 already know it, 1/3 get it, and 1/3 never will." I asked does that mean that 1/3 of my kids already know all about plate tectonics, all I got was stares in return.
If it means hiding in my room and doing an occasional lecture, so be it.
Thaks for saying my piece was great. It was just the rantings of a starting to burn out old teacher. It is time for people to wake up and notice that some kids cannot learn, no matter what method is being used. There have always been kids like this and there always will be.
If I have been teaching the same way for over 30 years, my kids learn and like class, why change. The old saying "if it is not broken,don't fix it" applies.
Anyone else out there using "Treasures" for their literacy program. I teach Elementary and my Principal bought this pile of s. It like most programs is completely scripted including the teachers think aloud thoughts. Some parts actually have built in pre-written bantor if there are two adults in the room. My point is, we are told what to teach, how to teach, when to teach. Everything is laid out and deviation is frowned upon. When tests are finally taken and scores come out it will be teachers who will take the blame, even though they had no say in what they have been directed to do. Every instinct can be going off telling you what they want you to do isn't working, but g-d help you if you don't just follow along like a good little sheep and except the blame.
What I read here in these posts everyday is what I should be hearing from my union challenging BloomKlein, but alas it is not to be. Got to protect those cushy jobs and political aspirations.
Unitymustgo!
Funny business, teaching. In any other line of work, you'd be given a set of goals, then it's up to you to decide how to achieve it. Or, if you were hired to perform a function by rote, the accountability for the results would certainly lie elsewhere. I've always felt that as a teacher, you can either hold me accountable for my students progress, and I'll decide how to achieve it; or I'll teach it your way then the results are on you. To hold someone accountable for the results without allowing them to decide how those results are to be achieved is, to put it mildly, curious.
I've also had more TC trainers in my classroom than I care to remember. I was always ruefully amused at their homilies. When I did the lesson according to the TC playbook, I was reminded to "be the author of your own teaching." When I deviated from the playbook, I was told either that what I was doing was "not the curriculum," or worse that "You're not teaching, Mr. Pondiscio, you're giving instructions."
Worse still, was the TC staff developer who responded to nearly all of my questions and criticisms of the writer's workshop model with, "Well Mr. Pondiscio, that's what real writers do!" I've written five books and was in journalism for 20 years. Perhaps I'm not a "real writer" but it certainly was not what I did.
Robert Pondiscio
Because all teachers aren't gifted the workshop models substitutes for the engaging lecturer. I always remember best those teachers who had the gift of gab in their area of expertise! They also inspired me to study more. Workshop is being perpetuated by Columbia TC. They are highly regarded by principals who want to indoctrinate their staff. They also get paid big bucks as consultants. Lucy sells her stuff to those who drink the koll-aid.
Robert, Spot on in your critique. Successful businesses and organizations like say the USMC give their people goals and a paradigm, but leave the actual implementation to the guy on the ground and judge by whether the goals were achieved, not whether the plan was followed.
Leadership speaker, author and former army paratroop captain Ed Ruggero constantly tells business leaders that wars are won or lost at the platoon level. You must train your leaders to think and adapt and let them lead.
Today is a good example: We've been talking about the Nullification Crisis and states' rights in social studies, and while listening to ATC the other day, I thought, "Wow, I bet my kids would love to talk about Medellin v. Texas" (Google if you have no idea--very basically, a current Supreme Court case that deals with states' rights vs. executive branch's power to enforce treaties). So I brought in an article about the case.
In my "higher-functioning class," I got the kids all the way through the article, mostly through "chalk and talk" since most of them didn't know what "habeas corpus" or "consulate" meant. In my "lower-functioning" class, most of the kids tuned out or loudly proclaimed that they were bored. But how could I have done a debate or an act-out type thing if the kids had zero idea what the case was really about?
I dunno. I think it's good to make contemporary connections in social studies. But I don't know how to do that when the students I'm teaching uniformly lack the background knowledge. They have to get it from somewhere. The school as a whole is weak in social studies, I'm discovering, and though I'm a licensed ELA teacher, I love history and I'm psyched to be teaching it.
BUT I feel like I have few alternatives to the occasional chalk-and-talk when the kids have zero idea about, say, constitutional law.
It's so frustrating to me when I hear descriptions of the workshop model like yours. In my class, yes, I teach a short "mini-lesson" (some strategy or skill that students will likely be able to use beyond that particular day). Then, they go off to work (might be reading, or writing, or analyzing an artifact), usually with a partner, sometimes individually. But my role is just beginning. I have a very specific job to TEACH kids one on one, or in small groups during work time. What do you do while your kids are working in groups? If you are just 'monitoring' or helping kids when they ask for it/you see they need it, they you are not teaching a workshop.
The workshop model is not designed to transfer knowledge from teacher to student. It works best when used to provide a specific skill. Yo Miss's effort to make her classes aware of the nullification crisis cannopt be done in a 10 minute mini lesson.
There is a deliberately incorrect belief that chalk and talk involves the teacher doing a 40 minute lecture. Every teacher who teaches SS, Sci etc knows that the leson is built around a few essentia; Qs which are the basis for class comment and discussion, not a 40 minute lecture.
Last year when my teaching team was brought before our Admin for a little Inquisition I was asked, as one who had returned to the school, what I saw in the kids. i sid that their skills at things like DBQs had improved from my last time there, but that there was a knowledge deficit. i was asked how I'd correct that and I said under the current methodology that was imposssible. One AP asked why I couldn't simply model what the kids needed to know. i told her that in 30 years of teaching in five different settings I had never seen knowledge modelled.
I must agree with the previous comments, particularly as they relate to social studies and science. This year I am again teaching social studies (and legal studies). My school has adapted a modified version of the WS model The model works well when teaching a strategy or skill. For more critical reasoning skills, teachers have to promote a level of active engagement in the subject matter, mainly in the form of discourse (or chalk and talk - and listen).
I use both depending on the subject's context. I do use a lot of DBQ type workshop activities, but find that the three minute "share out" just doesn't provide an ample opportunity for my students to delve further.
We talk a lot about how important it is for students to collaboratively learn from one another. I agree it is an effective approach. I use it and engage my students, not simply monitor. But I fear that my students' verbal discourse development is suffering at times.
And yes, come hell or high water, I always stop for the teachable moment. It is one of the most wonderful aspects of teaching.
The teachable moment! I heart it! I love it so much when a kid asks a tangential but important question, and we veer off into something else...Today we started talking about the Bill of Rights and ended up talking about whether or not teachers should be able to bring guns to school. It was really exciting.
I also fear that my students' skills in discourse are very lacking. I've been spending time this week actually teaching them how to have a large-group discussion, alternating whole-group with pairs and small groups. They aren't very good at waiting their turn, not interrupting, etc. But I find if I can make it into a game, they will give it a good shot.
Hope they understand, though, that no college professor is going to make it a game.
re: xkayde's comment about Apollo 13: I must say that that anecdote has really stuck with me ever since I read it. I'm relatively young, but most of the teaching I experienced was "chalk-and-talk"--most definitely in high school and even more so in college. The vast majority of my college classes were based around whole-group discussions (I majored in English and philosophy). And yet here I am, able to think independently, work with colleagues, etc.
Though perhaps, then, the question is: How did I learn to do that without being indoctrinated in "the workshop model"?
I'd be interested to hear how y'all think we acquire those skills, because I truly don't know.
Some years ago, Leon Botstein, the head of Bard College announced plans to revamp the school's masters program for high school teachers. At the time, he said something provocative and startling: "The education schools in the United States have had an unfortunate stranglehold on teacher training," said Botstein, "and they have created a pseudo-science in pedagogy and wasted the time of future teachers by not deepening the knowledge that future teachers need."
Ed schools took predicatble issue with Botstein's challenge to their work, but no one challenged his labeling pedagogy "pseudoscience." Remarkable.
All the things that teachers want -- respect, professional standing, authority -- flow logically from true subject expertise. All of the things we want from our schools -- well-rounded, thoughtful, capable students -- flow naturally from spending your formative years around the kinds of teachers Botstein envisions.
There are no shortage of ideas on how to reform schools. A renewed emphasis on what to teach instead of how would be as good a place to start as any.
Robert Pondiscio
Another ed researcher who is deliberately misapplied is Madeline Hunter. She did prodigious amounts of resaerch before she developed the so called Hunter Model. One of her most important and least reported findings is that the most important element in the success of the student in the class is the subject knowledge of the teacher.
Anyone heard an administrator say that at a workshop lately?
I feel like you don't necessarily need to have a depth and breadth as a reader and writer to be a secondary English teacher. And I think that's wrong. The teachers I remember most fondly were sincerely ecstatic about literature.
Now that's not to say that many of my colleagues aren't literary nuts--most of them, I think, are--but you certainly don't need to be to impress a principal. Rather sad.
I was having a similar conversation with one of the math teachers in my building today, and she echoed what Mr. Pondiscio said above: She knows her stuff in math. She feels that she has knowledge and skills that are valuable, and that her students need to know them, and that is paramount to her, not anything else. I wish that I felt like the system in which I find myself valued the fact that I'm passionate about literature, which is at least half the reason I wanted this job in the first place.
Recently I sent query letters (by regular mail) to a few principals at schools I respected. I did not use any buzz-words, which I can't stomach anyway; instead I described my literary experience, interests, and accomplishments inside and outside the classroom. I was sure that my letter would spark the interest of a principal who wanted passionate and knowledgeable teachers.
Not a reply from any of them. Now, if I had mentioned "reading strategies," "best practices," "technology-infused curriculum," "discovery learning," "data-driven methods," and "differentiated instruction," I bet they would have replied, if only to acknowledge my letter. It would be an interesting experiment--but I won't put my name to a letter like that.
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