I find myself still pondering that now. My thoughts cannot help but be influenced by my faith and here's why: one of God's greatest acts of love towards his children was to give them free will. If there is no free will within a society, there cannot be love, since love is a choice. It is a choice whether you return someone's love or not. It is and always will be a choice for me to love my students (because let's be honest, they don't always earn it).
So since love is the very reason I find myself in the classroom today, how do I allow my students to have free will while I am teaching them? How does this mesh with the fact that I am the authority in the classroom and there are boundaries that cannot be crossed especially concerning respect for classmates? Can I force my students to learn even when they do not want to?
In my classroom, as of right now, I seem to naturally take the "I'll try to convince them lovingly to learn" approach. I'll kneel down next to an unmotivated student and communicate that what they are learning is valuable to their lives and their future, that I teach because I care about them, not because I want to torture them. But this gets old coming out of my mouth real fast. I mean, it's true, but it gets old.
And I know the easy answer is that students do have a choice whether to learn or not, they just have to suffer the consequences to failure, which is true in all parts of life. But unmotivated students sometimes affect my teaching and other students' learning. And if they choose not to learn, it is so hard to watch them fail.
I am out of thoughts, do you have any?
I believe that everyone likes learning, but what they want to learn may not be what we need to teach. Although I'm not very good at it and it's hard, I try to relate the subject to something they're passionate about. Arouse enough curiosity, and they'll be motivated to learn it themselves. But that requires you to know your students, and more importantly, to believe and find joy in what you're teaching.
ReplyDeleteLeah
ReplyDeleteI really commend you for considering the students who are not engaging in the learning process, and wanting to help those students enjoy learning. I think your example is a wonderful way to try to engage students (and show them that you care). One thing I used to do with my high school students was allow them to "teach a day"---the students would each get one class day (usually Fridays) where they got a chance to be the teacher. I gave them a list of the curriculum we were covering each term, and they could select which day they wanted to be the "teacher"---I even let them grade (although I helped with this) and set the rules (to an extant---they got to pick one rule to add or change for the day).
Ooh, that's a good idea. How do the students usually respond to the teaching?
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