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PROUD TO BE AN
Dec
18
Why I’m doing what I’m doing
18/12/2010 | 3 Comments
This morning I watched this awesome short talk by Diana Laufenberg (more info here). I’m yet to find out if IATEFL-UK will be able to squeeze in my talk at their annual conference on a very similar topic: how teacher failure encourages teacher learning.
I’d love to do this talk, perhaps not at IATEFL but it’s something I am very keen to investigate, as part of my own reflective practice.
Great talk and it explains to me and those interested why I encourage my students to try and embrace failure because that’s where real learning comes from. It’s just what you fail at that matters. And what you do with the experience of failure. A good teacher teaches students to fail and to learn how to make the most of their failure. Bu only teachers who have learned to fail and profit from it, can do so.
Thanks @rmbyrne for the link on the award winning Free Technology for Teachers blog.
3 Comments so far
WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE YOU?
Diana Laufenberg’s presentation carries a powerful message about the need for educators to truly understand the ubiquitous nature of learning in the new millennium. It serves as a wake up call for student voices to be heard–and I suspect that it is not a matter of if, but when, more schools will be forced to adapt to the needs of the modern learner, or become irrelevant and face extinction.
-David Ligon
Thanks for popping by, David.
That was exactly what made post this video. I watch the discourse and discussions about education, and I feel that there is still little conversation taking place about how the way we approach the institution and its participants (teachers, parents, administrators, most of all: students) should be re-examined. Of course there are some great examples to the contrary, but the average school teaches the average student that failure is not passing a test, and at the same time we don’t contemplate how by enforcing this we fail to give them the education they need. What saddens me most is that we train our students to approach their own learning with the attitude that their marks and results in tests define how well they perform. The impression I get from my PLN is that there is a great number of teachers and administrators who have embraced the need to change but there is much pressure on them that they are forced to compromise. This whole “one step at a time approach” to change feels ineffective. The issue is not that there aren’t enough computers in the classrooms but that we can’t even use the chalk and blackboard to give students values and methods which make their learning a worthwhile investment into their future. Just by installing more IWBs and giving them gadgets, we are not going to give them anything they need, just make their time wasted at school a bit less painless. It’s like giving inmates television sets to while away their incarceration. Until schools were the exclusive source of gaining knowledge, the question was HOW we can deliver that knowledge in the most effective way possible. By no the question has changed completely. We should be focusing on Why we teach what we teach and how students benefit from it. They don’t come to school to learn about things, they want to learn how they can make the most of their assets and the tools at their disposal. A daunting task, but it’s the most exciting challenge education has ever had to face.
Hi Tamas!
Keep up the musings! I miss them . . .
Perhaps this essay by Dorothy Sayers will add something to your thought-train:
http://www.mtio.com/articles/aissar45.htm
Forgive me if I have shared this with you before.