One of the things I love about being a daddy is watching my 11-month little boy and 2-year old daughter discover the world. So many things are new to them that they view life in wide-eyed wonderment. My daughter will take the time to look at things out the window while we drive somewhere, or my son will focus intently on a toy until he figures it out. They're never rushing through life...they are enjoying all the little moments as they happen. As an adult, I am often guilty of living life so fast that everything is a blur.
In my classroom I often battle between the need to get through curriculum as quickly as possible (especially hard in a history class) and the desire to take time out to help my students "discover" the past and even themselves. Its the challenge of quantitative instruction versus qualitative instruction. This has been on my mind a lot recently because I think that quality learning should be a teacher's primary focus and I want to find ways to incorporate that more in my classroom. I teach an AP US History class and the pressure to simply load the students with as many facts as possible to prepare them for a big test at the end of the year is overwhelming. But what if I want to spend extra time on the civil rights movement so students can debate the approaches of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X? Or have my kids administer a survey in the city about the importance of political parties in voting? Or re-create the bleak conditions of families during the Great Depression?
Once again, I can look to Miss Bliss for guidance. Certainly she needed to get through the material of her class each year but she was willing to take time to let her students discover things for themselves: the perils of the stock market, the importance of the judicial system, even taking a stand against dissecting frogs! She didn't tell the students "there's no time for that, we need to move on" or "you won't be tested on that so don't worry about it." Yes I realize Miss Bliss is just a character in a fictional show, but there's an example there worth noticing.
When oil was discovered at Bayside High and it wreaked havoc on the environment surrounding the campus, Zack and the gang, on their own initiative, researched the harmful effects that oil drilling would cause and challenged the oil company. Those are real learning moments. A fellow teacher told me that after visiting the Museum of Tolerance, a group of students asked to organize a charity drive. The teacher turned it into a project where the students had to learn how to effectively raise funds, write proposals, and put on community events. That's real-world experience/learning that may not fit perfectly into a curriculum (by the way...this takes place in an English class!)
At the very least, I want to be able to encourage whatever passions and interests my students have when it comes to history. These days, students are taking AP classes as a necessary requirement to look good on college applications, rather than looking to develop and heighten an already-existing interest in the subject. (I attached a trailer for a new film that explores this very topic). So I can't help but wonder if it would be fair for me to teach a more quality-based class experience at the expense of teaching the info the kids need for the test?
I want my teenage students to remember what its like to be a young child when it comes to learning. To break from the mold of the traditional classroom experience and hopefully in the process, discover strengths and qualities in themselves that they wouldn't have seen if all I did was lecture or assign essays and tests.
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