The Push and Pull...Fueling the Passion, and Giving Students the Basics to Achieve those Dreams9/16/2016 In reviewing the content for this week's class it was striking to me how passionate each of the speakers were about the importance of our Education system. The theme throughout was the sheer amount of choice and information that lives in our world. To quote Ken Robinson, "Students lay their dreams at our feet..." and we must carefully handle those. That along with Adora Svitak's thinking that "Kids don't think of limitations", leads us to how vitally important our job is to protect those dreams and passions and help guide them into something that will ignite and energize their learning.
One of the biggest challenges that I think about daily is how to achieve that balance. The balance between igniting the passion for those students, and ensuring that they learn the vital skills they need to pursue those passions. Being a primary grade teacher I am foremost thinking about the foundational reading skills and math skills these students need to succeed in future grades. How do we teach those explicit skills and still let students explore what their passions might be? We are a Project Based Learning District and we have recently focused on Inquiry. Getting students to inquire and the basic theory of Constructivism. Student's construct their own understanding of knowledge. We give them some content and they construct their own learning in the way that suits them best. I love everything about this, but struggle with how to balance giving students this experience along with the basics they need to participate in this experience. In order to construct their own knowledge, they need to know how to have a collaborative conversation, read a partner's writing, and respond to an opinion piece. When I think about elements to prepare student's for the future; which is full of unknown, rigorous jobs that will require them to process through reams of information, I want to retreat to the basics. Teach them how to think critically, speak and listen to each other (work collaboratively), how to process through a dense piece of text, and how to write effectively. These are the places I want to start, and having them do this with rich pieces of literature, information text, poetry and pieces of art. This feels right to me, but I want to be more mindful of those passions and make sure to help build those instead of squelch them.
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