Learning as a Passive Enterprise

The assumption that learning is a passive process is perhaps the single most entrenched myth I run into on a daily basis. Almost all of my students, and almost all of their parents seem mired in the belief (contrary to years of personal experience) that one only learns from good teachers, that is teachers that are good at the act of teaching itself. According to this model, a teacher either has the skill to spray facts all over the learner in a way that makes those facts stick, or they don't. This version of what I do makes me out to be a kind of pitcher. If I through a good enough pitch, information will bypass the batter (all the available distractions that might interfere with learning), sail over the plate (meaning the catcher/learner will not need to move at all to catch it) and into the glove/mind of a catcher who merely needed to kneel in the right place...

Most of you understand this to be a silly idea. Setting aside the fact that the catcher must get up, get to school, and open his/her glove (none of which is a given)... most of us understand that more is required of the catcher than his or her presence. Unfortunately, most of the discussion of school reform, and many of the school reform efforts in place around the country serve to solidify rather than break apart this myth. When we hear positive news about teachers, it tends to revolve around the idea that a dedicated teacher can produce miraculous gains on test scores in a school year. This assertion, though strictly accurate from a certain point of view, is far from benign. To the extent that a teacher is capable of helping students produce gains, the teacher is almost always skilled at convincing students that what they are teaching has value, and thereby convincing them to aid in its teaching. In this model the teacher is delivering more of a sales pitch than a baseball pitch.

I have realized this summer that my own sale's pitch requires some work, in that I want to show the students the extent to which learning is an active and social process. In order to achieve this, I must break down the myth that if I simply explain things in the right way, students will "get it" and score well on exams. My inclination is of course simply to explain all of this on Day 1, that intelligence is fluid, that learning is a social process requiring of engagement, and hope that it sinks in. Of course then I would be actively promoting that which I sought to destroy.

This is a problem that plagues my teaching throughout the year, how to convince students to find information, rather than just giving it to them. We all know that we learn from one another. We know what it looks like when we do. We know when we are learning nothing. We also know that "Do as I say, Not as I do" is a method that usually fails. So lecturing about being an active participant in learning is doomed to fail; leaving me 5 weeks to figure out a different approach.

How does one manufacture an authentic situation in which a group of people learn that they are integral to the learning process?



That question is not rhetorical, and I would welcome any suggestions.

Creating a Culture of Learning

Last week I attended an orientation for the summer program I work with. While there was a lot of talk about making interventions and changing lives, I tend to screen that stuff out. Teachers can help, but counting on being someone's savior is probably going to lead to quitting. I don't know when making a difference stopped being enough, but apparently it has. I tend to simply tune these kind of conversations out, but this one got me thinking.

I teach hard courses. As a result, I tend to operate on the assumption that all of my students could be working harder. I also tell them this, frequently. In fact, I begin class every year with a stern discussion (lecture) about how hard my class will be, how hard my work is, and how I will be seeking to teach them to be students. It is not an optimistic conversation, and though it seems to work with 70-80% of my students, and 10% of the students just drop the course at that point, the final 10-20% start my course by giving up. My usual response to this has been to push harder on those students thereby cementing my reputation as a bringer of pain.

While I am fine with this reputation, it worries me that a substantial portion of my class is not motivated to rise to the challenge. This year, I am thinking about starting out with a discussion of the value of my material, and the values of meeting the challenges I will present. I am not entirely sure how I feel about this change, but I guess it is worth a shot. I think at the end of the day, it boils down to whether I want to try force kids to be what I think they should, or make peace with what they are...