Traditional methods need to become obsolete!

All of the readings for the week had a few central themes worth discussing further. The Strong chapter asks us to try to make our writing assignments more active, relevant, and purposeful. This connects well with last week’s D&Z chapter on providing variety in sources, with Strong asking us to do the same with our assignments. Use variety when we create our assignments under the CRAFT rubric, and students will feel like they have a role in the assignment and not just an innocent bystander. In Chapter 6 of D&Z, the authors provide six activities to get reading a textbook more active, relevant, and purposeful, in an attempt to make the dry, raw material of the text more accessible. As you can see through my utilization of the bold lettering, I used the same words to describe the two separate readings dealing with two separate topics, textbooks and writing assignments. After finishing the strong chapter however, I realized that there was an underlying theme with these articles that are essential concepts to the philosophy of teaching in general.

          One statement that stuck out to me in the strong chapter was how one teacher reflected on the creative writing assignment she implemented in her classroom, saying that she cannot see herself going back to the “stand and deliver” method of teaching. I think that’s what both of these readings are trying to tell us. That type of teaching needs to become almost obsolete because it simply doesn’t work anymore. Whether it is  drudgingly going through a textbook to provide your students with knowledge that will almost definitely forget when the test is over, or giving them a standard, straight-forward 3 page essay on a topic they couldn’t care less about, that kind of teaching does not harness the power of real learning. If we are going to model our teaching methods on backwards design, then we need to start instilling some real, meaningful, engaging, and relevant assignments and sources for our students. Make them feel like they are a part of something and not just an on-looker. We heard it from the students on the panel, they want respect and to feel like what they are doing matters. By putting the traditional methods of textbooks and essay writing under a microscope, we can manipulate these processes to cater to the student’s wishes for connection with their learning.