You know, having been teaching my own children now for 7 years, it occurs to me to think of what I would do if I went back into the classroom to teach. How would I approach teaching dozens of kids at a time, now that I've experienced teaching just two?
Right at this moment, I'm envisioning a classroom where I can customize education to each student, allowing them to mature at their own pace, not worrying so much about testing and getting a feel for what they do and don't know by knowing them. It would be hard, I know, but I think it would be better. Wouldn't it be so much nicer to have a teacher who lets you work on solving linear equations for another week before asking you to think about how to solve a system of linear equations, instead of pushing you through the curriculum because you have a deadline to meet? Wouldn't it be nice to have a classroom where you could sit with each student and help them individually to work through their problems until they truly get it? It would.
Right now, I think I would let my students view online lectures about the "new topic" when they're ready for it. And I would assign homework for each student based on how they're progressing individually. It would be a lot of bookkeeping and recording; it would be a lot of facilitating. And if students wanted to take off on a side topic, we could. We would. We'd talk about how algebraic notation came to be so that we could unerstand how hard it was to develop algebra. We'd hare off after fractals and statistics and data analysis; combinatorics and game theory. We'd get out in the world and apply our skills.
I know it would never be allowed in a public school. But oh how I'd like to try!
1 comment:
Maybe you're a cottage school in the making... :-)
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