Trusting our children....
As we sit and contemplate how to save the world and fix education, Angie and I keep going back to our teenagers and trusting them which is hard as a parent but I think it does tie into creativity also because as educators we have to sit back and trust our students. Give them a problem and trust them to try and figure out the answers for themselves and not feed them the answers. Give them the tools and let them muck around and get messy. Life is messy and as they figure things out for themselves they can astound us with their learning.
But it all comes back around to trust. Trust is hard. Teachers jobs are now on the line with test scores so it is harder for us to sit back and let kids “get messy” and figure things out on their own and problem solve. But that is what we should do with guidance from us. Give kids a table full of nails, magnets and paper clips and see if they can figure out how to turn the nail into a magnet. They can - with safety parameters of course so they don’t hurt each other. But it can be scary to some teachers to see. Giving kids the chance to figure out math story problems on their own always amazes me how they figure things out. Watching their brains work is fascinating.
I think administration has a hard time trusting us too because their jobs are at stake as well with the test scores and they need to see the end result. Until you have proven yourself as a teacher, it is harder to say “hey I am going to do this in my lesson plans”. You are going to get some funny looks at first, but after the end results come back it is worth it and the children’s engagement is worth the hassle. Your engagement with the lesson is worth it too. It all comes back to ingenuity and problem solving, good old fashioned science fairs, inventions and letting kids play.
Children can be creative and so can we. Let’s play more and watch what happens. - Trusting your own teenager is another story that can be discussed on another blog at another time but it is hard but worth it too but causes grey hair and clenched teeth.
Giving up responsibility and trusting them not to mess up is the hardest thing. But I agree that life is messy and kids need to learn some things on their own. I think if parents always come to their kids aid on everything and never let the kids figure things out on their own it can really hurt the kids. Some things (not everything) are best learned the hard way.
ReplyDeleteJamie,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post. We need to let kids figure more things out for themselves instead of being spoon fed the information all the time. I loved your ideas to let them problem solve with the magnets. When you talked about the math problems, I was thinking about putting my students into groups and giving them a bunch of props and having them make math problems with them. These truly are creative ideas at work. Sometimes, it is hard to illuminate the control. The curriculum sometimes feels controlled and safe. I need to get out of that safe element more and step out of the box.
As for my teenager, well that is another tricky one. I just wish he’d do his homework before 10pm.
I just made my daughters promise me that they would never be teenagers :)
ReplyDeleteShawn, Let me know how that works out for you! Yes, they need to "fail" and "flounder" and learn some things the hard way - it is very hard as a parent, but if we don't want to hold their hand into grad school then we need to start letting them take responsibility for their actions - tough love! For instance, I was creatively "driving" a car when I was about 4...Mom was sewing and I was under the kitchen table thinking the sewing maching peddle looked a lot like a gas pedal, went and got some "keys" aka tweezers to put in the "ignition" aka electrical outlet...no plastic plugs in those days and I learned metal in a socket translates to a "shocking" response...didn't do it again! ;)
ReplyDelete