In It's Not the Amount of Time, It's What You Do with It.
From A
Teacher's Life for Me, Michael Soskil shares,
“If we really want an excellent and equitable education system we need
to focus more on what our students are doing in school instead of how much time
they spend there.”
Over the years I have heard that the legislature wants to
add more hours to the school day or make the school day longer. It irritates me
because it doesn’t seem like lawmakers ask the teachers what is really needed
to help our students. They make everything quantitative when they should be
looking for quality and not quantity.
I am always amazed how much time we spend going to
assemblies, sports rallies, and wasting too much time on things that really
don’t seem to help the students. Students can even tell that their time is
wasted so it is no wonder that many of them see school as irrelevant.
We focus so much on testing that we teach to the tests
rather than teaching students the things that will help them survive and be
successful in life. When I hear people talk about how school was so much better
in the “olden days,” I feel the big difference is that we focus too much on
testing in today’s educational society.
I need to use time with students making their learning
relevant. I know we have to have high standards, but I think I can easily meld
standards with relevant learning.
First I need to get student input on what they want to
learn. If they don’t know, then I need to open up opportunities for them to
explore and see what they want to learn.
Once I find out the things they want to learn, I think I can
easily fit reading and math standards to this learning. Learning the background
and history of certain things can also help add science and history standards.
There is no “one size fits all” in learning and I need to make the effort to go one step beyond
for our students so that they have a quality education and a successful future.
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