After a recent presentation where I received some negative feedback I've been thinking about change.
One of the thoughts I've had is that some of the changes I'm suggesting are hard because they strike directly at a persons sense of who and what they are.
A year or two ago I had a student in my math class who's dad was a high school math teacher. He did not like my teaching method with the flipped classroom format. He made it pretty clear.
What struck me though was his fear. My teaching method attacked his sense of who and what he was. He described himself as a "Chalk and Talk" teacher. He stood at the front of the room with a blackboard and a piece of chalk and talked. And he was good at it. In this style he was a successful, competent, teacher who did his work well.
My method completely undermined his idea of what a teacher was and made his highly developed skills irrelevant.
I'm not surprised in the slightest by his opposition. I was attacking his very sense of self.
So many of the changes that education needs will do the same thing to many other teachers.
This is my professional Blog where I share my personal thoughts on education.
Hi Alex,
ReplyDeleteI am interested to know how you balance instruction and the flipped classroom format. Do you encounter students who feel that they are not receiving enough instruction? If so, how do you address this? As each year begins, do you have formal discussions with students to strategize how to learn and assimilate new material independently?
Thanks so much for this. I've been thinking pretty hard about your questions. So much so that I'm going to write a blog post about it. It'll be out shortly.
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