Stimulate Students to Think

"It is imperative that we use our every capacity to stimulate students to think.  They must not be recording devices that play back information for a class discussion or test with little thought of future use.  When there is pondering and stimulation to incorporate a truth into life, it will be resident in the treasury of experience.  Then it can be drawn upon to help students make correct decisions for a worthy, successful life.  Ask carefully formulated questions that stimulate thought.  Even if the responses are not perfect, they will increase the probability that important lessons will be learned."

Elder Richard G. Scott, (2005), "To Understand and Live Truth", Address to CES Religious Educators

While Elder Scott was writing to religious educators, this is really important information for any and every teacher.  Why are students in school?  What are we teaching them that's worth the millions of dollars and hours that we put into the school system?  Our goal should be to teach students information that they can then use to enrich their lives.  This is true with both religious truths and educational truths- too many kids pass a math class but still struggle to balance a checkbook or calculate their mortgage payments, they pass health but it seems to have no effect on the choices they actually make. 

 We have a school system- this is really cool.  Children and teens in the United States are all getting the opportunity to spend 12 years in a classroom without having to pay for it- let's really teach them.  Elder Scott says that we need to "use our every capacity to stimulate students to think".  It wasn't until I was at college that I had a professor who took the time to teach us how important it is to ask questions.  I was so used to learning the answers, I hadn't stopped to think of questions.  Curiosity leads to discovery that is relevant and interesting- and because it's both relevant and interesting, we really learn.  I think this is something more adults would benefit from learning too- ask questions about the world around you and look for the answers.  And maybe, before you google it, think about what the answer could possibly be.

I'm just now discovering how much I learn from being wrong or unsure- and it's liberating.

Stop Stealing Dreams

I want to teach.

I've struggled through college looking at a variety of majors and future jobs because I want to teach but I the system is bad.  So I searched for an alternative instead.

There isn't an alternative.  I love people, I love learning.  When I learn something I feel... better.  Can you think of the feeling of being so interested in something that time flies by? I want to help students experience that.  But after my EDU 1010, intro to teaching, class I realized that I don't like the way school works.  I've spent the last four years in college courses and I've learned a lot about people and how we learn and there's this continual pounding thought that comes up in almost every course:

We're doing it wrong.

Many of the thoughts I've had are included in the below links:

http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams

http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/StopStealingDreamsSCREEN.pdf

"In order to efficiently jam as much testable data into a generation of kids, we
push to make those children compliant, competitive zombies".


I can't tell you how many times I take a test and think, "what is the point?".  I'm jumping through these hoops that ultimately aren't helping and I'm getting so tired of it.  Why?  It's getting harder and harder to take classes and tests that are taking time and energy and money and are not helping me reach my goal.  Even the classes that I do care about, the ones about content that is relevant and interesting, become dreadful when instead of applying information, I'm once again studying statistics that 1) Are less interesting and useful than the other material, and 2) I will never have to pull from memory.  Standardized testing does not help us learn and it does not measure learning.

More to come.