In the video by Seth Godin, he talks about the question: "What is school for?" School in the past was about teaching obedience - getting students to be automated in their actions, their completion of tasks, and their way of thinking. He goes on to talk about changes in education. Some notable changes were the teacher's role transforming to that of a coach, learning happening anywhere at anytime, open book / open notes all the time, no more memorizing, and more. The focus of education is turning to the idea that we prepare the students to ask questions, problems solve, continually learn throughout life, learn from failures, and tune in to the student's passion.
Three statements I found intriguing from the video were:
- We want students to connect the dots not collect the dots.
- Put students in a situation were they can fail.
- Grades are an illusion - Passion and insight are reality.
These three statements apply to what is happening in my classroom. Students in my class choose the topics they want to learn about, they learn about the topic apply what they learned. They also are always working with the design process in which they identify a problem, design a solution, build it, test it, and evaluate it. Students are experience failures but they are learning how to learn from it - how to fix it.
In answering the question "What is school for?," I believe that the role of school is changing. We as teachers need to change as well to facilitate this new way learning. This way of teaching and learning is working in my class and I see this continuing and growing.
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