The Nuts & Bolts of 21st Century Teaching

When reading this blog post I found myself wishing I had a teacher like this when I was in school sitting in a history class listening to the teacher lecture on who knows what, when and where.  History was not my best subject...maybe because I just didn't study enough...or at all.  Why didn't I study though?  I thought it was boring...I tried to get into the assigned readings out of the text book, but my mind just wandered onto other things, like dinner, swim practice, the cute boy who sat behind me in math class.  Now that information is so easily accessible to everyone, the way we learn no longer has to be pure lecture based or teacher centered. 

I do have some concerns with this though.  While this seemed like an amazing project for the students to complete, it seems that the amount of time they spent on this one topic was much longer than what would have traditionally have been spent.  It seems that school districts and states feel that the way we are going to make our kids smarter is to just increase the amount we have to teach them each year.  Spending a great deal of time on a project like this is great if your curriculum is small enough to allow for it.  My next concern is how do you make sure your students are hitting the targeted state standards?  I know that the teacher can lend a hand in leading kids in the right direction, but finding that balance will definitely be difficult to master.

I really would like to find ways like this to teach my students, and see if it really helps them.  I teach math to students with learning disabilities and processing deficits.  I feel that with math, you need to teach process.  Math has a specific process that must be followed.  If you don't teach the basic methods early on, students will not be successful with higher levels of math.  I have seen teachers try to use a more student centered "discovery" method of teaching in my school.  To be honest, the majority of the students who have come out of this class have struggled the following year with the next level of math.  These students were not taught process.

I believe that we need to teach our students to be more critical and independent thinkers, and this method of teaching is how we can get them there.  It won't be easy, but once students and teachers are used to this style, I think we will see improvements.