Friday, January 28, 2011

Stop Interrupting Interests!

Yesterday I read this quote:

“Stop interrupting what people are interested in, and be what people are interested in.”

I loved the quote immediately. What does this mean to me? Stop interrupting student interest. If you are boring your students with what you are doing, then change it. Change the activity. Change the task. How? Give choices to meet the learning outcomes. Better yet, ask the students how they might like to do it.

9 comments:

  1. Great quote! As adults we love having choices in our own professional development. I struggle sometimes with teaching boring concepts...and how to make them authentic and exciting for students.

    Keep up the great posts!!

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  2. This says it all when we talk about play-based learning and student centered classrooms. It's like when teachers tell me their students act bored and uninvolved. There's a reason for that!

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  3. I'm in agreement with the previous comments. Two of the many beliefs that drive my teaching - if I'm bored, my students must be. If they're off task, stop, and change what I'm asking them to do. Bring them into the equation.
    I enjoy your common sense posts!
    @hdurnin

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  4. Thanks for the comment Heather. What may be common sense to you and I is totally foreign to many. That is why I write it.Cheers.

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  5. Brian- When teachers can let go of power and control, I think students will flourish in their learning opportunities. When you're teaching/presenting something to students, it needs to be interesting/engaging. Why should they care? There needs to be some sort of buy in. Students also need to make an effort to learn/be engaged. Choice is huge! There are so many times that I have to catch myself from interfering with situations where students can make their own decisions. Like Alfie Kohn said, "students can't learn to make decisions if they aren't given the opportunity." That's one of the things I struggle with because students are so use to teachers and parents making decisions for them that when their given a chance they don't know how to do it. They are very capable. It's a matter of empowering them with choice and what they can do with it.

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  6. Correction..."they're" So many damn there/their/they're's

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  7. I find that the provincially mandates, content bloated curriculum bullies me into interrupting kids too often.

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  8. The number one thing my own children say they would change in their classrooms is to have more time to work on what they are interested in and to have time to finish what they're doing. How often, as adults, do we wait to start something until we have a long enough block of time to finish it. The 40 minute period is the bane of creativity! Creators need time to mull things over and follow different paths (at least in their minds) before they can come up with something new and interesting.

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  9. I'm just starting a new topic which is a little dry and dull. I have chosen to share with the students that the content is a little dry and dull and thrown down the challenge for them to take the info and make it interesting and entertaining! We'll see if the strategy works.

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