Innovative Learning Blog
One of the key ideas from John Seeley Brown that resonated with me is that what many of the skills that we are teaching students today will be rendered useless in about five years. I've had discussions with teachers about how cursive is no longer taught in schools, and that handwriting may be obsolete in the primary levels in the near future. At the middle school level in Napa, all students have replaced the pencil and paper with chrome books. If the world uses digital technology to produce writing, then at what age to we stop teach pencil and paper writing and introduce the keyboard and Microsoft Word.
The key idea that stood out for me from Howard Gardner is that a lot of people mistake "discipline" for "subject matter". I like that he brought up History, because that is one of the subjects almost all teachers mistake "discipline" for "subject matter". I had a history professor at Napa Junior College who told us one day the importance of History has nothing to do with names and dates. I was relieved that for the first time in my life I had a professor who cared less about memorizing dates and names and only cared about the incredible stories from the past, how they effect us today, and what we can learn from it to help us shape a better society. Ken Robinson nails it when he says that public school systems kill creativity. It is difficult to agree with it because I am the driver who drives the creativity killing machine. I don't want to drive the machine, but I am forced to by my administrative staff who is forced to by their administrative staff at the district level and so forth and so on. As Ken Robinson states, school were set up to meet the needs of industrialization. Kids are steered away from music and dance because they are told that they will never become professionals and that they really just need to focus on reading and writing. Programs like AVID, are considered amazing because they set up students for college. I would like a program that sets students up for life in the real world. My experience with education is that the public system is created to numb the minds of the youth so they can be spoon fed the desires and intentions of the filthy rich. It's just that Ken Robinson has a better way of articulating how I feel. No administrator in Napa wants me doing digital storytelling with my students, playing my guitar and percussion instruments, singing, dancing, acting, because all of that is not part of the curriculum which was purchased with millions of our tax dollars. In addition, if another teacher doesn't play the guitar or posess the skills for digital storytelling than a teacher who does can't pursue that with their students because the world is all about "Collaboration", which in the eyes of district administrators looks like every teacher doing everything exactly the same so a data specialist can disect what exactly motivated the students to learn, or what didn't work, and what would be the next step. Collaboration meetings are often the exact opposite of promoting creativity. What is going to burn me out as a teacher is not the workload, the horrible pay, but the stifling of my creativity which trickles down to my students who end up having their creativity suppressed and sometimes wiped out completely.
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AuthorMy name is Joe Hall. I am an elementary bilingual teacher in Napa, CA. Archives
July 2017
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