Friday, February 16, 2007

Why do we teach?

Why do we teach? The answer to this question varies for every person. Personally, I believe that we teach in order to ready our society for the future. The students that we teach will someday be our future leaders, teachers, doctors etc. And in order to ensure a good future, students need to actually learn what is being taught and not just do school work to get by. There is a huge difference between school work and learning the material. I believe that in some cases school work as in worksheets, projects, tests etc. are helpful, but how much are those things actually helping the students really learn what is being taught? I think a more effective way of learning is creating a diverse learning environment where different strategies are used on a rotational basis so that every student will have the opportunity to learn in the best way for them. Some of these strategies include projects, hand-on activities, personal experiences such as field trips and individual exploration. Including these different strategies in creating a diverse classroom is a big quality of good teaching.

1 comment:

Emak said...

Elise -
I agree. Worksheets and such "busy work" does not really contribute to student learning. The hands on explorative stuff is what they are going to remember and where they will actually experience learning. We also need to think about the kind of leaders and doctors and teachers that we are helping to mold, and we need to make sure that we are preparing them for the world that they will face.