Join me on the quest of learning...

Michael Wesch, and his article, "Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance" is an article that speaks volumes to me. Just about everything that he writes about rings true for me in my classroom and in my teaching. Wesch writes about how so much of what is taught to kids has no meaning to them, and how students struggle to find meaning and significance in their education. I spend a lot of time thinking about that issue specifically, especially in teaching Theology. My job is not to convert people to Catholicism, and I think that if my job was just to pump kids full of facts about the religion that it would be silly, so I try and find the balance between an experience and facts, because I need to have grades, after all.

Wesch's discussion about "some students are just not cut out for school" is one that I have heard before. I LOVE how he switches it around with the word learning. Of course all students are capable of learning. The level of learning may be different, but the reality is that they are all capable. I have heard teachers say negative things about students and their success in school, and about how not everyone is "good at school". I agree. Not everyone is good at rote memorization, and spitting back information on tests that have no relevance to their everyday life. It saddens me that teachers are the ones that say things like students not being cut out for school. Dalton Sherman is a truly inspiring young man who I think all teachers should watch. I do truly believe that if a teacher does not believe in their students then they should not be a teacher. Their calling is somewhere else. 

Questions, questions, questions. Wesch's discussion about the correct type of questioning connects very closely to our discussion in class last week. Dr. Bogad talked about students asking questions during class and then responding to them with a question. I think it takes a real vulnerability on the part of the teacher to be able to do this. In my first few years of teaching it was not easy for me to admit that I did not know all the answers to every question a student may ask, but now, a few years in I love to look up the answers that I may not know the answer to alongside my students. Wesch says "the only answer to the best questions is another good question", exactly what Dr. Bogad said in class last week, and I think that is so true. Wesch also says " the best questions send students on rich and meaningful lifelong quests, question after question, after question". If we are truly trying to create lifelong learners, this quote will be especially true in our teaching. How we get that to actually happen, I think has to do with what we are teaching students. It points to the heart of what I am trying to get my students  to do as a result of my class. I tell my kids all the time that I am not just teaching information, that I am teaching life.  They laugh, but in reality, I am trying to make the things that we do and talk about relevant to their lives. The video that I linked to the word 'relevant' is all about just hat, how do we make learning relevant to our students, not now but also in the future. It talks about creativity and the need for it. It reminded me of Finn, and his mention of the lack of creativity in most schools and curriculum. How did our education system become one where being able to just spit back information meant that you are smart? The information that you are spitting back is someone else's' ideas and discoveries. Wouldn't it make more sense for the definition of 'smart' to be having an original or creative thought of your own??

Wesch talks about test taking and how students just want to "know what is on the test". I find this to be especially true of my honors level students. They are just looking for the information to get the good grades and move on. It really plagues the question of if they are actually learning anything or is the information gone once they put the answer down on the test. I guess that idea leads to the discussion of what is true knowledge. Is true knowledge rote memorization, or is true knowledge being able to make conclusions based on information. 

Wesch goes on to talk about the learning environment of students. He quotes authors Postman and Weingartner who say "the environment of learning is more important than the content (the message) and therefore  teachers should begin paying more attention to the learning environment they help to create". YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!! That is the exact reason why I spend the beginning of the school year creating a classroom environment where students feel welcomed, and comfortable to speak. A place where each of their voices is heard, and a place that they feel they belong. I wish that more of my colleagues felt the same way. So many of them do not create a classroom environment that is student-centered. They create a classroom where they are the star of the show and any interruption of the "show" is not tolerated. My classroom is not about me, it is about my kids. I can relate to Wesch when he said that the janitorial staff would ask what is happening in his classroom. I, too, have had the janitorial staff ask me what the heck is happening in my classroom that things are always moved around. Other teachers have asked about the movement in my classroom. Why are the kids always up and moving around, and oh goodness why do they hear us laughing??? I often find that the most challenging part of my job is not my students, but the other adults that work in the building. 

The globalization of everything is an idea that I talk about a lot with my kids. Teenagers are naturally self-centered, and its part of my job, I think, to show them how they are part of a big picture. not to discredit their little pictures, but to show how all those little pictures fit together to make a really great big picture. Wesch says "when students recognize their own importance in helping to shape the future of this increasingly global, interconnected society, the significance problem fades away". This is so true. Make knowledge something that can actually be used. The dates that the original colonies were formed is not going to help students in the real world, but being able to think critically about the world around them and challenge that world will.
Sherry Turkle and her article, "The Flight from Conversation" is an article in large part about me.  Or at least I felt like it was. I have mastered the looking at someone in a conversation while texting someone else. I first got a cell phone when I was a sophomore in high school. I had just gotten my license, and it was a "safety" thing to have with me in case of emergency. I can honestly say that from that time on, I have become a less effective communicator with my peers. Texting, face-booking, and everything else has made it possible for me to not have to have conversations with people...even with my own family members. I have found that it is easier to just text someone rather than have a full on conversation with them. Maybe this is because I am introverted and the barrier of the phone helps me to have time to respond instead of the instant response needed from a face to face conversation. I have heard students say that they can shape who they want to be with their online profiles, and tweets, that the way the world sees them and the way that they actually are can be two different things.
Turkle writes "we use conversation with others to learn to converse with ourselves. So our flight from conversation can mean diminished chances to learn skills of self-reflection". Self-reflection takes time, and time is something that people seem to never have enough of. When I ask students to "disconnect" and take a few minutes for reflection they become uncomfortable in the silence...they do not know how to handle the free time to be with themselves and their thoughts. 
I can also relate and connect with Turkle when she writes "When people are alone, even for a few moments, they fidget and reach for a device". I am guilty of this, especially in the car. I do not know how to just do nothing. Either do my students. This translates into a very active classroom. I always say to my kids, if I am bored, then I know for sure that you are bored too. While I am guilty of most of what the article says, I also know and can relate to the value of a good conversation. "Most of all, we need to remember — in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts — to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another". Beautifully put Turkle We need to allow ourselves to be vlunerable, to make mistakes, and to be more than someone behind a computer pr phone screen.