CART BEFORE THE HORSE
Implementing new technologies in the classroom is like a double-edge sword: you'll never know if it accidentally slaughters all your efforts in being an effective and progressive teacher. Nevertheless, it's not the tech that should be blamed...it's the concept of blowing a new wind of change (Hello Bob Dylan! Thanks for responding to the Nobel's committee. Haha). Confusion will never happen in the classroom if students are always exposed to the conventional teaching approaches, say, grammar-translation whose process involves read-translate-take notes-memorize-repeat.
My experience of observing teachers reveals that once teachers are willing to implement changes - any kinds of changes ranging from classroom management techniques to skills-building - to the classroom practices, they are faced with the possibility of putting the cart between the horse, of following the wrong lesson sequence. It happened to my pre-service teacher training in a reading lesson when students were checking answers in pairs. It happened to a teacher with more than 10 year experience when he was first using the KWL technique. It happened to me when I was conducting my first action research project 2 years ago: I even confidently figured out the research findings and indicated them in the abstract before actually carrying it out and gathering all data. Just to submit the abstract before the deadline!
How many times have we put the carts before the horses?
How many times have we punished our horses for their struggling movement
when the carts were wrongly set up by us?
How many times have we silenced the horses
when the were trying to inform us of the reversed order?
To be an effective teacher, I suppose we should think like a horse.
Hey Tien,
ReplyDeleteAs educators we've all been there at one point or another, as the horse that pushes the cart. Back when I was a pre-service teacher I had a wonderful mentor who reassured me out of the fear of just such a situation: kids are resilient - they'll bounce back no matter what you do.
That same wonderful mentor told me that you should not try and forget it if you had a disastrous lesson with a class; instead, try the same thing again at a different time. Usually, students now understand what the task entails and will have more fun and a smoother learning. Wherever you put the cart in that first lesson hasn't killed the horse nor ruined the cart - now you know better and it knows better - so just have fun with it.
Cheers,
Jo
Malaysia.
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ReplyDeleteHi Jo,
ReplyDeleteI agree that sometimes kids will learn whatsoever. We were once among those kids, weren't we?
Really wish to talk to your mentor one day. The advice sounds very much from a guru who transcends the instructional design.
Thank you for dropping by.
Tien