The following article discusses the impact that moving to more of a collaborative learning environment has on the introverts in our classroom.
As a true introvert myself, I completely understand the dread and panic and apprehension that comes with the dreaded group project. Yet I have my tables set as groups, utilize Kagan seating strategies, and have just started a group project in our classes. Why you might ask? Because the reality is regardless of how much us introverts might want to work by ourselves for the rest of our lives, that is not the reality of the workforce that we live in. We will work in groups whether directly or indirectly for the rest of our lives and the earlier we learn how to divide the work, work together and be effective and efficient and doing so, the more successful our children will be. I think the right balance for any classroom is a mix of a lot of different strategies. Those that meet the needs of different learners and personality types and engage students on all different ability levels. While I love the premise of project based learning, and the research that supports this type of learning, there is no "one size fits all" for every classroom and every teacher. Nor for every student which is why every student counts! http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/09/introverts-at-school-overlook/407467/
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I have worked in a lot of different places throughout my life. I've worked for family in a family owned business that we had for 40 years. And don't give me wrong, that was a physically and mentally demanding job. We moved trees and shrubs, planted them, we worked in the fields. When I was 6 months pregnant, I was still unloading tractor trailers full of plants because that's what you did. You did whatever it took for the business to be successful.
And then I went into sales and had to depend upon a commission and a quota to help support my family. Knock on doors and get alot of them slammed in my face and that was a emotionally draining job. Then I went to work for corporate America and I worked for a large defense contractor. I learned a lot about bureaucracy and red tape and the way things work behind the scenes. I learned that sometimes you would rather not look behind the curtain. I moved up pretty quickly and I worked hard to prove myself in the professional setting. I learned a lot about interpersonal relationships how to work with people who I had never known before. I made some of the greatest friendships that I have encountered but also learned that working there was not something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So I followed my dream and went into teaching. I have to tell you that this past couple of months, has been the most exhausting work that I think that I have ever done. When I worked at for that corporate America my biggest challenge was when I managed approximately 30 people. I had to do performance evaluations and monitor their work and discipline and so on, however now I do that for almost 150 kids every single day and their future depends upon it. I teach math and the reason I chose math is because they have to have logical thinking skills and understand how to solve problems to be successful in today's world. It's not always going to be why equals 2X +3, that's not the being good at solving problems that I'm necessarily talking about. It's understanding the rules and the steps that math teaches you. Learning how to follow those and work within the boundaries of those rules and modify them for what works for you but still work with in them. Those are the skills that kids need to be successful today, the actual skills that I think is the goal of common core, and those are the skills that I'm trying to teach. I'm trying to teach them to think outside the box, to look for answers on their own, to not learn one way to solve a problem. In my class we use a variety of tools to accomplish this. At the end of the day I'm emotionally and physically and mentally and spiritually drained. But it's a kind of drained that you get after you have given it your all and you are exhausted from it. It's a good drained. A drain of exhaustion that you know that in someway you're maybe making a difference because not all of these kids come from the greatest home. I'm sure some of them are struggling with some really heavy stuff and for them to be successful at one small part of their day could mean the world to them. To know that one person cares and wants to help them that's what I'm here for. I know that throughout this past year as hard as it's been on my family, that God has put me exactly in the place where I'm supposed to be an in the moment I'm supposed to be here. My hat goes off to all of those teachers out there that have done this day in and day out for days and weeks and years and on and on and on. You are the unspoken heroes of our society. You are making a difference. You are making this a better world place. As I previously said, insightful input from my students after their first unit on equations. Many of the comments for the Deltas (things to improve or change or do better next time) including actions that the students should take, such as study more, stop rushing, more sleep, work harder, etc. However some of the feedback lets me know what actions I need to take such as slow down in explaining, try to cut down on some of the chitchatting that is distracting, allowing more time to review homework and problems. give more examples, explain more on moving in equations, and definitely more problems with no solution, all real numbers, 0 and parenthesis. I am grateful for this honest feedback to have this so I can see where I can improve and help them.
The information also lets me know that some of what I've been doing has been helping and that they like it. This is so beneficial to help plan for next couple of weeks as we move into inequalities which will be similar to many of the steps we've just covered in equations! If you have tips or insightful feedback for success in your classroom or learning experience I'd love to hear about it! One of the roles that I filled while working at Lockheed Martin was to act as a Green Belt Trainer for the Lean Six Sigma program. As part of this program I got to work with adult learners and discover how they learned (amazingly very similar to children) and teach them about how to work to make continuous improvements to the products and support that we provided the Special Ops Forces.
Now in teaching, I feel like every day I am working to continuously improve everything I do for the success of my students. Today we finished our first unit on Equations, and miraculously I survived as did most of the students! After the test, I asked everyone to provide their "Plus/Deltas". (This was an activity that I was familiar with from our Green Belt trainings and was an activity that we sometimes used to close the day. However, as I sat here tonight typing in and consolidating the responses my husband asked "You asked the kids what they thought?" I replied "Yes" and he said "No one ever asked me what I thought or what helped me...." and I wondered if that is one of the reasons he has struggled so hard at school in his adult life, because no one ever asked. But a different topic for a different day.) The input I received I have been overwhelmed at how positive and insightful it has been. I expected to read "Mrs. Snell is mean" and "This class stinks", but have read no such items. Most of the feedback has been extremely self-reflective and indicated that many of the kids knew that they could have done better if they had studied more/worked harder/practiced more/etc. I have learned that while most have loved some of the movement activities we have done over the past couple of weeks, some have not liked them. Such is the struggle with so many diverse learners. But overall, I feel reaffirmed and blessed to have so many wonderful students and look forward to how I can make learning and math better for them over the coming months! Have you ever taken a chance to leave it all behind? That's what I did to come to teaching. I left what most would consider a very good, fairly stable job to come spend my days with sassy, sometimes unruly, definitely stubborn, sometimes stinky students trying to explain to them the magic of the math world. |
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