After our class discussion, or rather analysis of the articles, I started thinking about what Dr. Shutkin said at the beginning of class in relation to the readings. He said, "We are suggesting that curriculum is not a thing, but an action, an experience of what is studied in school. It is about getting curriculum into the heads of our students - like chopping heads open and pouring knowledge in." At first, I was a bit confused during this lecture. I started trying to make sense of the analysis and realized that our teachers are the one who engage us and initiate the grasping of knowledge. If a teacher merely feeds the material to students like a scantron test into a scanning machine, not everyone will grasp it and not everyone will be challenged to achieve more.
I immediately flashed back to one of the first moments of realization in my educational career: my first grade teacher showering me with books for grades 5-7. I was a bit accelerated at the beginning of my childhood; I learned to read and write at an early age (um, what happened to that?!). I was able to read those books within the next calendar year. I was pushing myself, learning ways to ask for help and figuring out new tactics for understanding these books. THAT is what children need to learn to do: learn different ways to learn. I started working on my timeline with that initial event in mind. It was interesting that it is my first memory of a teacher pushing me to be something other than the curriculum. She triggered the idea that I need to understand the curriculum and material, but learn several different ways to get to mastery and discovery.
"suggesting that curriculum is not a thing, but an action, an experience of what is studied in school" - getting curriculum into the heads of our students - chopping heads open and pouring knowledge in
One of my more memorable teachers also employed the idea of pushing beyond what I thought I was capable of. However, as educators, we have to be able to evaluate what is going to challenge our students in an encouraging way. I'm sometimes scared that is we push just a little too hard, students may become intimidated and give up. It probably also has a lot to do with the students' motivation. We need to be able to determine what situations allow for really pushing students and what would be considered going too far.
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