Schools vs. Skateboarding

Sneak Peek at #psuaged22's Photo Shoot

Working our way into week 6 of the Fall Semester, I have been thinking more about the more problematic topics of student engagement. Three readings in particular stood out to me as they related directly to a question that has been circling around in my mind the past few days; "Instead of stimulating learning, how do we stimulate a love of learning in our students who have been conditioned to keep their heads down and do what the teacher asks for a good grade?" 

In Tweak Your Teach: Dr. Tae's Building a New Culture of Teaching and Learning, Dr. Tae emphasizes that we need to build a new culture of teaching and learning because "school sucks", especially in science and math which are closely related to much of the content we teach in agricultural education. To emphasize this point, Dr. Tae learns to do a new skateboarding trick that takes him 58 tries to master. In doing this, he compares schools to skateboarding, or authentic learning that requires failure before mastery. Students need to learn to struggle. Rigid learning timelines and grades have fooled our students into thinking if they memorize something within the appropriate timeline, they will get a good grade and that's all that matters. Similarly, in Pursue Passion: Demand Google 20% of the Time at School it is highlighted that students struggle to pick out a major in college because they have been given no freedom to learn some of the things that they are passionate about throughout their K-12 experience. Hoping to find some incite on how I can be an educator who challenges my students to learn authentically and explore some of what they are passionate about, I have come up with the following three questions!

To my future students... "What are you passionate about and how does that relate to what we will be learning in class together?"

To my Cooperating Teacher... "How do we break students out of the trend of thinking about grades over thinking about what they can gain by learning authentically in the classroom?"

To my #psuaged22 cohort... "How do we utilize the advice given in Small Shifts in Teacher Talk Make a Big Difference to help our students feel a sense of control over their learning when we have so many other things to think about when learning to teach effectively?"

"Taylor"ed with love,