#thatmomentwhen

You talk about how you want to blog more! And come up with these great topics and things to talk about!

...and then don't post anything for a solid week.

Way to go, Emma :P

Reminds me of Shady Fizz every time...

It's the Once ler from The Lorax.

Raincheck

I got off work late and have to be up early. Forgive me for needing another day to work on this :P

What Teachers Rely on in the Classroom

So as a teacher candidate, I am always fascinated with the new and upcoming things in education people complain about. Teachers acting too much like parents, teachers not acting enough like parents, teachers not needing to have a license, teachers needing to record and analyze mastery data for evaluation, teachers losing tenure, teachers losing union privileges, the list goes on and on. One that's been big for about the past decade is teachers relying too much on the textbook to teach their students.

Now this one intrigues me immensely. I understand that the current fad in teaching is authentic learning, and as a language educator I see nothing but benefits to this teaching style. However, textbooks definitely have their place in the classrooms. Textbooks are typically aligned to the standards that the teachers have to meet for each grade level or subject. As someone who just spent the past two months making lesson plans with only a syllabus and textbook as a guide, I found the textbook extremely helpful as to the direction my lessons should be heading. Now don't get me wrong, I agree that textbooks should not be relied on, but I don't think they should be ignored either.

I know teachers who are completely anti-textbook...but then they turn around and do worksheets and only worksheets everyday. Excuse me? You do realize that is just as bad as relying on a textbook, right? Relying on one form to teach and retain knowledge in your classroom, no matter the form, is not best teaching practices. Best teacher practices involves including a multitude of styles for both teaching and measuring learning/retention that way each student and learning style is targeted.

Currently, authentic learning, even though it's ideal, is facing issues in the public school systems. It's hard to have students learn how to properly order from a French menu if there's no budget to go on a field trip to a French restaurant and have them try it first hand. Even though the students' production can be replicated in a classroom, it is the authentic interaction that helps the students reach outside of their Zone of Proximal Development and gain further retention than just learning inside of a classroom. With that being said, authentic learning requires more critical thinking and problem solving, which is something that several students struggle with for various reasons. Still in adolescence, even some of the brightest students have never needed to find an answer that wasn't right in front of them. As an education major we learn how to ask High Order of Thinking questions, but with the lax requirements to become a teacher, not all teachers have that training.

I feel that the textbooks I have been using in my classroom are a good resource for language learning. I feel this way because this textbook takes into consideration but low and high achieving students as well as multiple intelligences and multiple ways to present materials. This textbook allows me to target the four learning skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening, as well as multiple projects that incorporate the culture and identity of the language. With that being said, I do not use the book in every single class every single day. I make sure that the students know where they can reference materials should they need to, but I make sure that they are not doing book work everyday. Especially with my own experiences with the French language and culture, I try and get them to see other sides of the language. My classes have done research on other French speaking countries. They have listened to French music. They have learned French dances. They have read French newspaper articles. They have "visited" Parisian monuments. They have learned common French expressions and slang. They have learned various greetings for both formal and informal occasions. None of these are presented in their books and 100% of them are authentic. And because of it, I have had several students come up to me and claim they have learned more in the two months I have been here than in the past semester.

I've only seen a handful of people teach French or a language and I know that there are multiple successful ways to do this. I would never claim that my practices are the one and only working method. However, I feel I have been properly trained and am knowledgeable enough in education reform to know how to run a classroom, even if I don't yet have a teacher's license. With that being said, having a teacher's license does not automatically mean that the students have the best possible education in front of them. If a teacher is relying on a textbook or another single means of teaching, that teacher should probably reconsider the methods he/she are using. It's my opinion, but the research backs me up. :)