Government texts describes political efficacy as "a belief that you can take part in politics or that government will respond to the citizenry." What about educational efficacy? To what extent do students participate in their own education, and how much can they anticipate their teachers will respond?
For instance, you can read the various rants about the nature of classroom assignmnets. Many of them boil down to the accusation that teachers are "lazy" and assign meaningless work, simply to give students an arbitrary effort grade. Why bother?
Respectively, I designed an explicit syllabus of relevant work. All testing and reading dates are clearly outlined. Yet how many of our class members have actually read ALL the assigned readings? How many have taken notes on their reading? How many have in any way, shape, or form tried to negotiate meaning on their own? But when the average AP class grade is a 76%, and many students earn Ds and Fs, guess who gets blamed for your low test scores? When teachers issue low grades, where does the blame lie?
The majority of students rely on the teacher to provide the answers. It's a fact that the one doing the talking is doing the learning--so I'm really, really smart about government textbook topics. I create (although sometimes steal) power points, I explain them to the class, yet YOU are supposed to learn.
Once and for all, get in my brain! This would be so much easier if you all just would hop right into my head! Does anyone have any answers to this conundrum???
Education
15 years ago
19 comments:
I think that students will participate in class and make an effort to learn if they know it isn't just notes and reading every single day. The stuff that we do in class (like posters, other group work that requires full group participation) really helps break the monotonous cycle of scribbling down notes before the slide changed. Although that is what I would rather do, I'm sure some people find taking notes easier to do than a hands on activity. There is a point to everything you do, nothing is really "useless".
Okay, now off to work.
I never know whether she is yelling at us or actually just saying this stuff cause it is actually relevant. Makes me mad and makes me think at the same time. Anyways-
In response to the thought that Mrs. R had about teaching is the best way to learn; she is right. When you have to teach it to someone else you think about it more and start to connect dots that you didn't see before. Think about WTP; the leaders or "Smart people" in each Unit had to teach the others in their group about the subject. I believe this is why I actually retained a lot of the knowledge from my unit. So with this being the case one would think that it would be better just to have the class learn something on their own and be there own teachers. However this is not how the system works. At a young age we are taught to believe that teachers are the smartest beings on earth and they hold the answers that we all must find. So to say students need to teach themselves is saying the system is broken and in that case we must reprogram kids starting in kindergarten. But then that starts to bring in another issue- when we start to get into high school are we going to trust our teachers? As youngsters we all loved our parents and their judgment but when we got older we realized that they don't necessarily hold all the answers. That's when we started rebelling and making our own decisions. As of now we would still believe anything Mrs. R says about Government over anyone else we know for the most. But if we were brought up in the situation to be independent from our teachers then we would argue constantly with them (even more than what we do now). This would cause a decline in actual learning as most of class would end in nothing but argument with nothing actually being accomplished (sound familiar anyone?). An if in some case when a student actually did know more than the teacher the credibility of said teacher would be non-existent. In that case the best thing would be to replace the teacher with that student and pay him/her to teach the class till the teacher can redeem themselves.
Anyone have a solution to that?
Okay--so who's replacing me? But I'm keeping the money!
Doesn't this hearken back to Schopenhauer's argument from the beginning of the year--that men of "learning" learn through books, but that the truly successful people learn from reading from "the book of life", through lived experiences.
So what counts as a lived experience? Does simply sitting around blogging about our existential thoughts and burning questions count? Or are we still just "learning" the old-fashioned way?
Socrates believed the only true way to learn was through discussion, through probing the questions people seldom asked, and questioning the possible asnwers and assumptions to those questions. Do we do that?
And in order to learn about government, there's not a whole heck of a lot of lived experiences out there for us to make it happen. As much as I love this idea of action-based, applicable, experiential learning, I can't make that happen all of the time. Then what?
And when I ask students to read, take notes, do stuff for themselves (trust me, your notebooks certainly aren't for me), what's the general response?
And OF COURSE I'm yelling at you--or rather using passive-aggressive, manipulative mind games and guilt trips. Is it working?
I think student chose whether to do the work the instant they get it. Like the reading I will be honest, I haven't done much of it for the fact that it bores me to death and the reading I push through I do hold a piece of it with me. I personally love to read but the fact of the matter is that it has to be something I want to read and I know I chose the class, so the fault that I don't like it is all my own. I think that taking notes is a snooze, seriously we talk on the matter for so long and we end up just talking about one slide for fifteen minutes or longer. Don't get me wrong I love the open talking but the fact is we take like five days to get through one slide show and it drags on and on. If we just finished the notes and stayed on track we can discuss at the end. I agree with the fact that I can research something and learn way more on it than someone teaching me. It's like when your parents say I did drugs when I was younger and it was stupid of me to do. Well, kids can learn from their parents mistakes, but most people have to live through it to experience it. I believe we learn through research but to truly look at all sides you must discuss it. I have many different views but I believe I have a open mind I can see both sides. If say me and a friend read something than go discuss it I'm positive that we will have thought of something that the other didn't. So, I don't know a solution, I just know we have to change the habits of our class to raise the grade percentage.
Hmmmmm i think we all are at fault on this one. How can you blame the person who is SPOON feeding you knowledge? All we have to do is find the answers in the book. And we as students knew going into this class that it was going to be a challenge. We are supposed to be the intellectual elite of Maricopa High and we took this class so we could challenge ourselves with upper level thinking. And yes the class average is a C....but there are 105's and 104's in this class which proves it can be done,it just might take a little more effort that will take away your time from "kickin it with the homies" or whatever it is you do after school. What are those people doing that the majority of this class is not?! I think to successfully pass this class with an above average grade the level of respect needs to improve alot. And Mrs. Russoniello as funny as that is we cannot all get inside your head i think you would go insane. But screaming across the room at each other about who is a sexxxiiii actor is not going to get us to learn anything whether from a teacher or peer perspective and has no relevance to American Government. As upper classmen in high school(I say this because I am one of the two juniors in the class) I think we should take this class and enjoy it but as young adults and with maturity. We can still have fun, I mean Mrs. R has some funny stories that actually deal with government. Does anyone remember her story about due process and ASU when she was partying?! That was hystrical and educational at the same time. Lets enjoy this we only have 3 more months left of school and then you guys are free into the college world. And im not positive on this one but im pretty sure if you are sitting in a college lecture hall and your professor is lecturing and you scream out loud I think Johnny Depp is sexxiii I think you will get kicked out.....
Just some random thoughts
it does go back to "Schopenhauer's argument from the beginning of the year--that men of "learning" learn through books, but that the truly successful people learn from reading from "the book of life", through lived experiences." because although people can read a book and gain basic intelligence memorising the pages of a book and speaking on how it relates to the world aournd us says nothing to those who do not understand a book of many principals they understand and hammer to their hand and a nail and maybe how to runa business but if they took a class they would not longer inderstand the process of building or file systems. nto everyone can look at a page and understand it to the same extent another can some have to hear it others do it and some have to watch the process themselves or it does not make sence. society has been mostly centered on one core way of learning i hand you a book, worksheet, and pencil and you figure it out. occasionally one may talk and sometimes (such as in your case) you explain things to the fullest of your ability. however one of the difficult things to deal with is when soemone goes on and off track continuosly becuase we tend to blank out and come back in the middle of important info or just get off course because it has nothing to do with the subject. i am sorry jordan but some things are just useless, entirely useless. such as giving a sophmore even a freshman in highschool a crossword puzzle that has things like find the word "cat" ( personal expirience). anyway soemtimes people do not do the work because they dont understand it an occasionally no matter how long or how many ways you fraise the subject they just wont get it till it clicks. that just can't be helped.
the best i can do to get into your head is day that everyone works differently and a teacher as platos noted can not give a person intellect but they have to get it for themselves. much like when you say you cannot give us your brain you just have to try to make us understand. we do not have your form of genious, our realities are all different than yours so we must be taught differently. this is where creative assignments are useful such as the go green thing it will give those who learn by working with thier hands to do so. those who learn by teaching to teach others and those who have to see things working in a system to undestand the system will see. this is an effective way to teach while still educating and running like a well oiled machine. although everyones needs cannot be met giving them a break from the steriotypical school project and proving instead of just saying that you can make a change. that is the way to teach. creative assignments, lax time such as poetry week (still teach and by making them speak and write they learn) seminaring and reading meaningful literature. \
christen Valentine
(So this is me attempting to tone down the essay-ness of my comments, and write like a normal person. Here it goes.)
I think that the level of education a person receives comes down to the level of effort they put into it. I mean, we don't really have a choice as to whether or not we sit through lectures and power points--what with the state-mandated attendance, and all--but it is our choice whether or not we spend our afternoons pouring over pages and pages of governmental jargon, absorbing every detail into our not-so-practiced brains. Seriously, though, if someone were REALLY motivated to ace AP Gov, and put THAT much effort into it, more power to them...It's not their fault they're freaks of nature. I vote we blame the slave-driving parents, and get that kid a couple hundred hours of psychotherapy, but that's just my compassionate nature, I guess.
To get back on topic (you should all be fully aware of my tendency to ramble at this point), there is virtually no chance that any of our fourth period classmates are that intense in their study habits. The magic of the Honor Roll seems to lie in finding a happy median between the socially lifeless, adolescently deprived souls, chained to their desks and the completely unmotivated, homeworking neglecting, careless, Future Failures of America. If a person doesn't complete any of the assignments or listen in class, they're not going to do well in the class. It's sad, but true. However, forsaking every other aspect of life is just not healthy, not to mention just a little bit deranged.
It's the job of the teacher to do everything in their power to get the kid to learn, but the kid's responsible for what they actually retain. The work you put in is what you get out, but most kids would rather not kill themselves in order for the first letter of the alphabet to appear next to their name.
As students we are responsible to go to school and learn. That was the reason it was created and the thing I hear everyday when my younger hormonal brother says that he hates school, but likes the girls and my mom is yelling at him. School is the place we go to everyday to learn. It is the teachers job to teach us the material and it is the students job to obtain it and use it to better their lives. It is not the job of the teachers to make sure that we obtain every single thing that they teach nor is it our job to teach ourselves. If students would stick to learning and teachers stick to teaching life would be easier. Sure the teacher will be taught things from the students and vise versa.We cannot expect people to always know what we are talking about and always understand it and that is why we cannot have one without the other. If students put in half of the effort they use to do things that they care about in their school work their grades would be higher. Also, if teachers were more consistent and not all over the place the level of respect, not that it shouldn't be their, will go up as well as overall understanding.
I personally like taking notes and hearing you talk about them with explanation. Yeah doing group activities are exciting and fun, but half the time we end up just talking about other things and barely doing the poster with hardly any understanding of what we just did. I do believe that students are the ones that control their grades and youas the teacher aren't saying "I don't like you so i'm going to give you a F." It just does not work out like that. But also if there was anyway to make this information some what interesting we could get more participation in the class rather than just the usual kids that talk.
Their is definately a problem. I think Mrs. R does a much better job than alot of our teachers with providing us with work that is actually good work and I love how we know what our homework will be from the begining. But that places alot of responisbility on the student. I think what we learn depends on how much effort we put into actually trying to learn. I know I speak for alot of us when I say that although alot of teachers are lazy and give meaning less work students are even more lazy. I think part of the problem is that we don't really have a say in what we think we should learn about. I may be very unmotivated to science homework because it seem to relate to anything that I might use later on in life. I enjoy learning things that are actually important and that I will use. It would help students alot to know why we need to learn what we are supposed to be learning. Rather than learning it simply because we are supposed to for the test. Because if that is all we are learning it for we won't remeber it or put any value on it and it essentially becomes meaningless.
To Jessica-
Not to brag but i was one of those kids who have 100+ percentage in classs and as anyone who knows me will tell you i am far from an overachiever. The only reason i have a grade like that is because i actually have an interest in government and its fun for me to learn new stuff about governemnt. So it seems that to get kids who normally slack to do their work the teacher needs to make an assignment fun and interesting. Of course this can't be the case all the time. Some assignments are just going to be boring to some students. But look at this blog. Everyone is participatiing for the most part and the ideas for the most part are relatively well thought out.
Sure we get off topic alot but it's kind of like a quick break from the usual and for the most part we can get back on topic easily. Sure we did get alittle out of hand last thursday but with how often we go through the cycle it's surprising that it has only happened once in the year. But i do agree that i will have to control my love for Johnny Depp in College if I plan to stay in class.
I think that it is just the nature of any class to be a little out of hand sometimes. True in college we will have to behave ourselves and not shout out random jokes that make the whole class laugh. But the thing is that this is not college, we all have some growing to do. The fact of the matter is it's not just one person getting of track it is the whole class. We are all seniors and we want our high school experience to end, we are getting down to the last few weeks and we are just feeling that we all want this to be over, it's no ones fault, just human nature. When you have been doing this for four years and now you want to be able to be past it, it's hard to keep on track. As for the class getting out of hand, I personally wasn't there, but it happens. We debate a lot and when we all start talking on one subject it is hard for us to change. I agree with Preston, you have to care enough about the subject to have an amazing grade and me personally I have a B (not counting the test grade which probably made it go down a lot) and I truly don't care much for government to the point were I want to research it and talk about it all the time. I care enough though about my grade to try to keep it up, but most people hate it so that they would rather have nothing to do with it. And to just say we picked the class. Truly it was this or Economics, your chose. The main problem is that we are a small school that is growing; we don't have many options or alternatives when it comes to classes we don’t like. So, we have this stuck feeling till graduation, which suck because of the fact that we all hate feeling trapped. But we have to deal so just work through it.
Okay so I love Issis, Preston, Faith--the rest of you can...
Shouldn't government be excessively applicable to ALL of your lives? We're talking about the very nature of democracy--and if you want to be part of the power elite (which being in this elitist class should indicate) shouldn't you all be interested in what we're talking about?
OK--enough with the power points--you can all tell the difference between the ones I made (which were specific, to the point, and generally helpful) versus the ones I cheated and downloaded.
No more cheap, plagiarized power points! Hurrah--but you have to be willing to wing it with me from day to day--like we did today.
As one of the "others who can..." government as a class, this class, i have no interest whatsoever. i dont want to take notes i dont care about the test. i just dont. English, i'm all over that, often writing my essays as soon as they are assigned. but gov, i'm just barely, and sometimes not even getting by.
i think what happened is this- first semester, we slacked off big time "writing" our WTP responses when really we should have been working all year on the text book, and relating that to our units. Because of the time of the WTP competitions, i'm not sure it could really happen. but the thing is, after an entire semester of slacking, and now this semester of extensive work and reading, i dont want to do it, and honestly i dont have the time, and defiantly not the interest to go out of my way to get the stuff done.
i'm pretty sure random tangents about the basketball game or bon q-q really contributes much to what we're actually doing though. we get way too off topic, and then are expected to go back to the drab lesson, by this point you've lost my interest more and i REALLY dont care. but i'm thinking this is all mostly me and general annoyance.
Ouch! We don't want notes. We don't want lectures. We don't want to read. We don't want random tangents. We don't want to do anything.
Sometimes YOUR teachers are actually bored to death too. Bored by the fact that we do have a specific curriculum to teach and assess, and that the great majority of our FINEST students refuse to work.
I think I'm getting tired of the "it doesn't interest me so I don't care" excuse. Get over it.
My fellow classmates,
Since when is “it doesn’t interest me, so I don’t have to do it” a reasonable excuse? Do any of you care about your grades, college, or your future? Even if some of the notes or work may be boring, you should still do it for the sake of getting a decent grade. Yes, some of the work that we do today may never apply to us later in life, but it should at least open your horizon for the moment. By keeping an open mind and focusing in class, maybe you’ll even learn something!
I’m sure everybody knows my “I’m from Cambodia…and my family moved to the America” story, so I definitely have a reason and a purpose to do well in school. The fact that my family gave up everything (family, friends, business, culture, security, etc…) for a chance to better my education, is enough for me to do twenty years of “busy-work”. You guys (I’m not directing this at everybody though) on the other hand, should appreciate our educational system. At least you don’t have to clean the classroom everyday before the sun rise, or else get beat by a bamboo stick (my school was too poor to afford janitors!).
I’m not saying that our educational system is perfect. Arizona is 49th in the state, and I don’t even want to talk about America’s ranking compared to the rest of the world. Maybe if everybody starts doing their work and putting a little bit more effort, we’ll actually be able to compete with China and Belgium!
Hhmmm....maybe this is why I was voted "Teacher's Pet"
I think that the one of the big reasons why everyone isnt doing work in class because it's getting closer and closer to the end of the school year. I would think teachers would begin to understand that since it's so close students aren't going to do the work. They just want to be done and the work is doing nothing for them. Now if the teachers want us to continue learning they, as I said before, can take other ways in teaching the lesson. I can only speak for myself for me in this situation but, yes I do enjoy learning about government, but I dont like to do so much work for it. Like in one of my classes the teacher teaches us the lesson and gives us alot of homework but tells us to do as much as we feel we need to do just as long as we understand it and did some of it. I like how he does that because it doesnt put a burden on me, yet I know if I don't want to get lost in the class I need to atleast do some of the work.
Well....cant really say that i dont agree with you because you are overall put under alot of pressure with the many expetations of thoes who belive what a teacher is and should do. But yes students lack alot of independent learning because were straight out lazy and we do rely on you for ALOT! But as i have stated in my previous blogs if the work is put in the perception of our views as a whole and we can kind of play around with it and associate that with fun projects such as our "MOCK TRIAL" then we would get more involved and want to do the work ourselves as well as think on our own (using OUR/YOUR [lol] brain(s))
~4ng!3~
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