I am currently entering my second week at my new placement,
and I must say… I’m wishing I was back at first placement. There are a few
things that just seem so foreign to me, so difficult to swallow. I feel like I
have been inculcated with a perspective of teaching for the last 4 years of my
college experience that is now being called into question in one sweeping
six-week placement. Unsettling to say the least. I have been taught that the
best way to approach the learning process is to place the student at the center
of such process. That it is the student who should generate an intrinsic value
in the material and learn with the facilitation of the teacher. My first
placement embraced that train of thought, offering every opportunity to think
outside the box, hold simulation events and promote big teaching ideas. High
school, however, is a whole other ball game. Its “Welcome to the Podium: Slap
down your notes and preach it from bell to bell.” Lecture intensive and content
intensive, I am simply expected to be an expert in information and not necessarily
in delivering it. I think content is important, but at what point is it so
important that teaching methods are to be sacrificed for the sake of rote
knowledge. Disgruntled, disappointed, envious of my old placement – I just
think that there is more to teaching than for me to furiously take notes at
night in preparation of delivering a display of oratory genius the following
morning. Maybe I’m being unrealistic, but I think students will remember “how I
taught” before “what I taught.”
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