Jennifer Jilks-Racine
Classroom Community
I believe in being a good role model as a lifelong learner. I believe in creating a climate conducive to educating an increasingly diverse group of students. We must start by building a classroom community in which risk-taking is encouraged. Teachers must ensure that all students have every opportunity possible for success.
Classroom management is an old outdated notion, which presumes that students must be disciplined, punished and controlled. I believe that we must build enough self-respect and motivation into a classroom to ensure that students feel good inside. This means that they don't have to bully others to feel their power. And bullies are not students with low-elf-esteem. Research shows that somewhere along the way they have learned that they have power and can control the emotions of others. This must stop. Teachers must help students find the self-motivation required to become contributing member of society and empower them to take responsibility for themselves, their behaviour, their attitudes, values and manners and allow them to achieve their potential. It means that we engage the learner with authentic, exciting learning opportunities in which they cannot help but become involved.
I believe in a thematic approach to learning, which is based on my training in Piagetian philosophy of pedagogical practices, now readily reflected in the more modern transformative approach. In this the Information Age we must help students learn how to manipulate data and information and reform into knowledge. They must become critical thinkers, reflecting on their work, manipulating ideas. Learners are not just vessels to be filled with data but adults under construction for whom we must light the lamp of learning. I believe that computers in education must be carefully and thoughtfully implemented.
"Tell me, I'll forget.Show me and I may not remember.
Involve me and I'll understand."
Chinese proverb
I believe in helping students to learn how to learn not just to memorize facts. This is we are never finished learning. It is a lifelong event and teachers must help them become lifelong learners.
Our educational system needs revamping. It has not changed in many years, we still teach as if we are in the Agrarian Age, yet we are facing an increasingly diverse world and population of students. Their behaviour, learning disabilities, physical and emotional needs, attitudes, culture, religion and socioeconomic levels have changed and diversified exponentially. We must work with the students, new curriculum models, infrastructure and tools to help create an, as yet, undeveloped and untapped delivery model in the Information Age. We must awaken students to a Global World to improve our public education system. We must be creative in finding spiritual, emotional, financial and physical resources, both personally and professionally, to deliver the best education possible. Our school must be inclusive and harmonious. We must embrace change, which is based on current research practices.
In the Information Age learning opportunities can and should be project-based. It increases students learning. It empowers students to tackle new ideas and issues to create authentic results. This is the only way we can teach students in the present to be able to live and work in the future. We need to help them to understand how to take data, freely available and change it into information and knowledge.
I. data + theory +
structure II. information +
praxis III. knowledge +
experience IV. wisdom +
discourse
I. data + theory + structure = information
There is a great deal of data and theory available to all. We can just fill students with facts. Anyone can find hundreds of billions of facts at the bits and bytes of our search engine. If this is not combined with a theoretical framework and structure, this information will either be forgotten or will be unavailable to us as information. Bloom's Taxonomy is the first step in this quest for truth, facilitated by computer technology, but not driven by the tool.
II. information + praxis = knowledge
New knowledge requires the learner to synthesize what they have learned, reflect upon it and integrate it into our paradigms. This information is best solidified by practice. It will become knowledge only through the assimilation and accommodation of new knowledge to old structures (Rose & Meyer 2002, Piaget, 1955). Wald and Castleberry (2000) insist upon it in the new millennium. It is through applying this new information that it becomes knowledge.
III. knowledge + experience = wisdom
Without applying our new knowledge and experiencing its effects and consequences, we will not create wisdom from our experiences. We learn more from our mistakes than our success, common wisdom tells us. We remember what we have learned when it has been applied to project-based learning, to real life and to authentic and meaningful tasks.
IV. wisdom + discourse = truth
Once we have gained wisdom, we have an opportunity to apply it in discourse. We will create deeper truths and a deeper understanding of ourselves and the teaching and learning process. Group presentations are a successful way to present our findings to peers and create that truth. One of the failings of education in the new millennium is that few teachers have time for discourse. We are hard-pressed to find time and opportunity to share ideas and successes. That down time in the staff room when we highlight a difficulty and colleagues can offer suggestions is diminishing. Many of us are too busy running from the classroom to duties to clubs or choir practice to tap the resources of our collective experiences. Professional Development opportunities are becoming too time consuming and expensive.
Not every learner can learn and succeed on the same day, in the same way and to the same extent. Schools and teachers must control the conditions for learning and allow students to feel a mutual respect for themselves, for each other and for staff.
We spend a lot of time in our classrooms developing acceptable manners and values. The most important thing we teach our young people is how to get along, respect for others, and how to work together. Most of the work of the world is created by teams of men and women who can cooperate and work together to solve our Global problems. Only teachers know what teaching is like. We face numerous stresses from various stakeholders. including testing, accountability, student testing which hampers our abilities to teach.
[ Jennifer Jilks | Articles ]. Last update: Dec. 28th, 2003.