Sorry if I go off subject

Mr. W,
I can’t agree more. We have a King Lear Street Talk wiki, and a Paradise Lost wiki - and honestly, I can say that they’ve helped me understand and appreciate those two literary arts more than any test or “essay.” Students leading the lesson has proved to work! Not only limiting to students from our school - but “people” from all over the world. Why limit the learning - and educating?

George,
I believe teachers need to look beyond their agenda and school book - not limiting themselves with a paper and pencil (not saying all teachers). But, I also believe students should also look beyond what the digital content has in store for them. It’s far more than Microsoft Word and MSN.

Jemma & Sean,
Can’t agree with you more. My music teacher wouldn’t let us go to a jazz concert for our “music” assignment. To her, the only music was classic.
And, saying this after a mid-term exam, I go to school to learn: memorize the teacher’s testing method, write down the testing dates, memorize information, take the test, and empty brain. Take me out of my comfort zone...

Julie,
Your questions are mine exactly, only from a learner’s point of view. Why do we have to work in student sweatshops - moving from one station to the next in strict intervals, punished if late. When is it time to boycott against student produced sweatshop produced products??

Ken,
Thank you. Students who do not adapt... that will be a problem - but is it worth it? - to risk the chance of those few who would “fail” with the changed system? Honestly, I don’t know. But, isn’t it worth it to try?

And, as for your questions - they are really hard. Teachers can’t assign a certain number of days to let them fail. But, what is considered failure? Fs? or, meeting an obstacle in path to achieve a certain goal? If we stop categorizing students as “F” through “A,” maybe the whole concept of failure would be different.
Teachers don’t have to be helping the student all the time, failure (defined properly) can lead to success. I think letting a student fail is a part of the process, and that balanced with guiding them and giving them advice - wisdom.

LPeters,
Thank you! And, that’s where the teacher comes in. 25 different students, 25 different directions. I agree with you that some would be self-directing themselves, some would be needing help. Before giving a grade to the students, maybe teachers can spend time helping those students know how/where to begin. Many students who fail at many things in life never learn how to do their laundry and pay their bills, but many students who succeed as a “perfect student,” also never learn how to do their laundry and pay their bills. Teachers don’t always have to teach and grade - what about teach and advise? - can we have that relationship?

Anne,
That’s what frustrates me the most. I feel like a hypocrite, writing about how the school system is not “right” and how it should change - yet I’m working on my applications every single day, taking SAT prep course, and taking as many APs as I can to squiggle myself into a decent college. Those who *went* to school and knows how it *should* work and parents who are part of the status quo makes it harder to stand out. (I think I went a bit off track.)

Molly,
Can we be the last generation to only read Shakespeare in high school because it was required?
I agree with you about our school system. Small children seem to love learning and experimenting. Where did that all go?... and why?

Adam,
Balancing out the preaching and the teaching!

Joyce,
To answer your question, elements that are critical to me in a learning experience is self-directing, independence, and risk-taking: eliminating the fear to fail. But, that can’t be all. Maybe, like some people are saying that there are times we have to “preach,” new methods of teaching needs to be present.
Like I’ve mentioned before to Mr W (and he mentioned his wiki), our AP Lit class has wikis set up for King Lear and Paradise Lost. To describe both of them, because this is what I really call “learning and teaching” compared to “preaching,” King Lear is run by students - students translate sections of King Lear into modern day sentences. And, I know I’m not the only one who’s learning from this translation - in other words, I’m not the only one motivated - because I know for a fact many of the students in my class learned much more from it, studying it with the actual text next to them. Also, student made videos of Paradise Lost - visual learning. Discussions on Ning about questions, literary arts, technology are more helpful; it engages the students with the teacher, and most importantly, other people outside of the school community.
I really invite everyone to check it out - and see how students are actually learning from all this.

Diane,
Sure, not all students are as motivated as us - who are actually speaking up. But, isn’t that the same thing now? Not all students are as motivated - so they aren’t learning - although they seem to be learning, because they are memorizing the information for a while for testing. Isn’t the whole purpose to learn - not memorize?

Carolyn,
Motivation level, in my opinion, would be much higher than what it is right now. We can’t suddenly change from “preaching” to self-directing in a second, so, like you said, we would start from 1st grade so that students would understand how to “self-direct.” Instead of placing more and more emphasis on testing the students and “preaching” as they grow older, maybe we should place less and less emphasis - let go of the rope instead of making it tighter - making room for self-directing.

Tim,
You prove my point exactly. Why limit students, “assuming” that they only have the capacity to devour information, when, if self-directed and set loose, we can build blogs like Students 2.0 and dog sleds. Give students some credit - and our passion. Or, at least, give us a chance to “earn” it.

You said:
“I would also like to add that the one thing I find most exciting about self-guided learning is the immense feeling of satisfaction you earn once a task is completed, once you have learned a new skill, don’t you agree? and don’t you agree that this sense of achievement and also the learning experiences entailed within this type of learning is a great thing to experience?”

I agree 100%. I give my students a lot of leeway when it comes to topic selection in most of our projects. Many did not take advantage of it and failed miserably. Is it because they are bad students? Nah. I think it is because they were never given that much freedom and did not know how to handle it. By the end of the year, most were on track with expectations and more importantly, their own self-expectations.

There will always be students who either are buying time until graduation or just want to get by on the minimum. I guess that is why we have “minimum” wage jobs. I do not see you guys as that type. You would thrive in a setting where half your day was self-directed. I would love to facilitate that type of setting as an educator because I would learn as much as any student would. Heck, I work under the expectations that I do a lot of self-directed learning to teach other educators to be better at what they do.

So, I say keep it up. Your thoughts in your last comment were spot-on and exactly what I would expect from this group. When we agree, say it. When we disagree, debate it thoughtfully. It is the only way we grow as a group. Thanks for the conversation.

You have hit the nail on the head and then drove the darn thing right through the floor. Exactly! Many teachers actually get in the way of education; most schools are not places of learning, but rather factories for mass producing “workers” or “college students.” Then, for most of the first two years of college, they have to unlearn all the ridiculous ideas that have been pounded into them. There are several reasons why this happens, but the main one is everybody is afraid to try something different or new.

I worked in a school in Interior Alaska for a while that was 100% project based learning. Students were allowed to choose what they wished to study, and teachers assisted them with structuring the outcome. We had students who actually built snow mobiles and dog sleds and then wrote elaborate reports about the process as well as produce a public presentation of their work. It was brilliant! The students got the point — learning is power and the ability to learn was completely in their hands. So after three years of this amazing program that taught students how to learn on their own and critical skills like creativity and problem solving abilities, guess what happened? They (administration of the district) closed us down! Why? Because how were the students going to pass the state graduation test without taking normal classes? This is a vicious cycle — tests without merit being used to measure learning without merit.

The only learning truly worth engaging in is the learning YOU choose to engage in. Students have the power to learn anything, if adults get out of the way and let them learn.

Tim

I did watch the whole thing. I even visted the website and looked around. I saw testimonies from students about how much they liked it, but not about what they did with it in the long run. In the video I saw more about kids not working than working. That is not to say they are not working/learning. I am not implying that at all. I would have just liked to see more core area work and how they did it. And when I asked for data, I did not mean stats or test scores per se. What I meant was where are they now? Names like Einstein and Shakespeare were being thrown around so much as outcomes of this type of learning that I wondered how many went in that direction and how many ended up in bands wanting to be rock stars or just ended up working at Wal-Mart.

Again, I am just exploring the outcomes of the school, not denying its benefits.