Funny thing blogging….

Seems I am becoming obsessed. 
Obsessed with my blog.
Not so much my blog, as my own thoughts.
I spend days thinking about my next post, thinking about new ideas to put up and how to word them.
I have never been a diary person, put putting ideas down on the page is a powerful thing.
What’s even more powerful is the thought that someone, anyone, might read them….

Where does teaching end and learning start?

At the beginning of the year, I did an activity with my homegroup resembling a time capsule.  I gave the students a questionnaire asking them some frivolous questions about their lives at that point, plus a place to put down 3 goals they might have for the year.  I then sealed all these up each in their own envelope, having completed the activity myself as well.  As the school year has now since drawn to a close, I followed the activity up and gave the envelopes back.  The kids responses were very interesting; most had completely forgotten about the time-capsule sheet at all.  But perhaps another time for this….

The point of this blog ; one of the goals I set for myself was to get a study score of 40+ (in the A range,) for all my Year 12 IT students.  I can tell you now, without having seen the kids exam grades, that this has not happened.  Perhaps I never really expected to have all of my students achieve this.  Yet the question then becomes, how much responsibility can we as teachers take for our students’ success?  Is it possible for any student to achieve an A for a subject, regardless of their skills at the beginning of the school year?

As mentioned, I am not sure I really expected this kind of success for my class – the standard bell curve one expects for any study would have to say that this is highly unlikely.  I guess my goal indicated my own desire to teach the students well.  If I then did the best job I could, should I have expected every kid to achieve?

The old adage “you can lead a horse to water…” seems to ring true here.  You can plan a myriad of brilliant activities, all stunningly well-prepared, to have the students stare glumly at you wondering what you are on about.  It seems quite obvious that at some point, students must choose to interact positively with the material put before them.

However, over the years, I have been a wide-scale exponent of the multiple-intelligence mode of delivery, designing a range of activities that should somehow connect with a student’s natural tendencies and preferred modes of outputting their thoughts.  Is this teaching students by stealth?  Almost catching their brains unawares by sneakily finding the way that they think best?

I guess at the end of the day, even in this scenario the student must choose to do their best with the activities presented before them, but being a competent teacher is a HUGE responsibility; one that too many take too lightly.  We can never force a student to perform beyond their abilities, but providing activities that will stretch them is the mightiest of challenges.