Forget teaching...

In her blog entitiled, Elementary, My Dear, or Far From It, Jen Orr muses about educational innovations.  She wonders if innovations in education have become the end as opposed to the means to an end. Jen writes,

I wonder if we’re so busy trying to be innovative that we’ve lost sight of the

educational goals. Innovation has become the thing rather than literacy or

numeracy or making connections in learning or whatever we might have

 been hoping to make happen. I wonder if we’d be better served to think

more deeply about what we want for our students, teachers, and schools and

what is already in place or available to make it happen. Maybe innovation is

actually slowing us down and holding us back…

 Go to this link for the full blog entry and the rest of Jen’s wisdom http://jenorr.com/?p=2187

Reading my friend’s blog entry got me thinking about the idea that all that’s new is old again or is it all that’s old is new again? Either way there is this sense in education that what goes around comes around. You have no doubt heard of the pendulum swinging… back and forth, back and forth. One literacy example (albeit oversimplified) would be phonics-based reading instruction -- whole language -- phonics-based reading instruction.

Jen’s blog entry also got me thinking about the “end.” For many years I have persisted in my belief that our focus in education is on the wrong thing. As teachers, we often worry about the wrong thing. That thing is -  teaching.

Wait! What? I realize this might be the first time someone has told you to stop thinking about your teaching. Let me say it again as a teacher educator, louder this time,  “Stop thinking about your teaching.”

When we focus on teaching we get caught up in covering material. Teachers don’t cover material. Cats cover material.

                           

When we focus on teaching we talk about teaching reading or teaching writing or teaching math.  The problem is we lose the learners. WE TEACH CHILDREN! We help children learn how to be readers and writers and mathematicians and scientists and historians.

Forget teaching. It’s about learning. What are your children learning?

Still learning… to teach, Dr. G.