Thursday, March 14, 2013

Chapter VIII - Alternative Blog Post


For my chapter eight blog post I chose to write about David Warlick's blog 2 Cents Worth. I read the first post which was a piece on Gary Stager, a very prominent educator. In the article, Warlick goes over Stager's presentation at a recent education conference and lists some of his points. To my surprise, I found myself agreeing with Stager on almost all points.

One of the Stager quotations noted in the article read, "School should work with the tech of the day." The blogger then points out the poignant question of "why do we think education should be cheap?" The thought raises some questions to me:

Why are we not spending more on education?

Why are the worst schools the least funded? Shouldn't they get more funding since they are in obvious need of it?

Why are schools so behind in adapting technology?

The quotation also brought to mind an old mantra I heard once, probably uttered by some dreadlocked hippie wearing a 'legalize it' shirt. It went something like this: it will be a great day when schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.

The last part of the article moved me the most. In the very last lines Warlick writes, "What an amazing learning opportunity that surprise avails any teacher – wasted in this case, because she thought her classroom was about teaching, not about learning." I think far too many teachers don't take this advice to heart. They're focused so much on teaching they actually forget that they are there for the students and not vice-versa.

1 comment:

  1. The focus on teaching rather than learning resonates with me, as well. It is much more difficult to focus on student learning, especially in this day of standardized testing and other 'teaching' perspectives, but ultimately we don't do our jobs if students don't learn. Since it is a mutual process, though, how do we be sure there is a good partnership between student and teacher?

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