This is a totally random thoughts post.
Quick–without thinking–how many teachers have you had that could tell an interesting story?
Late at night when all my work is done, kids are in bed, wife is in bed, and the animals are fed I often sit down and turn the tv on for @3o minutes before I go to bed. The first channel I flick to is CSPAN. Tonight there was a guy on there talking about his book Forgotten Heroes. He was just an older gentleman standing in one spot looking at notes talking about colonists taken prisoner during the American Revolution. I thought he was fascinating. My favorite three professors were flat out lecturers, I can listen to audio only podcasts all day, and I like to read books without pictures.
Hmmmm….
Teachers are not suppose to lecture, show powerpoints with lots words, and they are supposed to make sure that they use every conceivable media and hit every intelligence in their lessons. But I know teachers and professors who break all those rules that kids love.
Do educators have to add all the extra stuff because they are boring folks that kids tune out to preserve their brain cells? Can they simply just not tell an interesting story? I have seen large groups of kids sit silently and listen to storytellers spin their tales while just sitting in a chair. I know plenty of people who love TED talks–most of which are just a person on a stage talking for 15 minutes. I actually started thinking about this last month after returning from Google Teacher Academy. I had planned on sharing some highlights with my kids for about ten minutes. After sensing their engagement the story went for nearly an hour. No pictures, no music, no laptops. All I had was an interesting story. I also remembered a student who got up in one of my classes in college and taught about King Louie the IV for a 20 minute mini-lesson. All he did was tell a story, he just talked and everyone listened to every word. It was a good story…Maybe 2.0 tools are just part of a conspiracy started by teachers to cover up the fact that they are boring.
Now I can hear the chorus of “But everyone learns differently…” Plenty of studies are out that show simply being led through mental exercises are kind of like doing the real thing. Maybe great lecturers let people smell, hear, feel, and move as the characters but only in their mind. Almost as good as the real thing.
As a part of interviews I think asking how teachers would integrate technology into the curriculum would be super. But how about this one “Speak to me for ten minutes about something you are passionate about–tell me a story without moving.”
I became a history teacher because I like stories. I wanted to put the story back into hiSTORY classes. I am starting to question if maybe my heavy emphasis on using 2.0 tools are making the stories take a back seat. I think I have lost my focus. I have kept my essential questions, concepts, inquiry, conclusions, etc, but have maybe lost the story.
Uh-oh…just had a thought–seriously this wasn’t planned, it just popped into my head. I was kind of going through what my kids did in the last year and they did tell many stories. Maybe, just maybe I am feeling the pains of me not telling them the stories. They are so busy creating and telling the rest of the world stories that they put together that there is no time for me to tell them stories. I am taking a backseat and becoming more of a spectator rather than the center of attention the more I integrate technology into my classroom. On the cover of my portfolio that I turned in with my resume was a quote that went something like “The goal of every great teacher is to become useless.” I think it is happening much earlier his year–and maybe I have created this conspiracy theory to cover up the fact that letting students take control is scary business. I am in the middle of a huge project with them right now in which they are in charge of telling “the story” to four other schools and they are not turning out how I would have told the stories. But that’s ok because there is no conspiracy, just my kids driving the classroom with me in the backseat shouting out directions once-in-a-while.
5 responses so far ↓
…and I could have written this post a few times too! I have wondered the same thing myself, about how kids can sit still and listen with rapt attention when it’s a good story.
I’m a qualified history teacher too and I get my first chance to sink my teeth into history classes next year, and I can’t wait. I can tell you, there will be as much story telling as possible happening in my classes – whether that’s by me or the kids.
As for the things teachers are ‘not supposed’ to do, I think that’s where we fall down as well. There are no hard and fast rules. No need to say we ‘aren’t supposed’ or ‘aren’t allowed’ to do something – anything in moderation and accompanied by a good story!
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Jess, I can only guess you do not teach in California. If you did, you would have hard and fast rules as to how you are to present the material, when to present, and how to assess the students’ learning. And if you don’t do it that way, you do not get a good review which could cause you to lose your job if you are not yet tenured.
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Hi Paul – thanks for stopping by my blog earlier. How nice that you took the time to read and comment – a gift for me at the end of my long day.
Stories are so much a part of my teaching. When I’m losing them, for whatever reason – the weather, the time of day, the boring stuff that I had planned, their exhaustion – I can always get the room back with a story.
I taught seventh grade for seven years, and my favorite project every year was the story project. Students would identify a person, a thing, a tradition, or a place around school and discover and tell its story. No matter how they told the stories, I always learned something – either about the story or the storyteller. So, keep driving the bus from the back of the room, and keep letting your students tell the stories.
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No argument here. Good stories are essential. But what does one do when he has no story to tell or has run out of stories? As inspirational as I tried to be in the classroom, I fell short on many a day. And, “lecture” is a developmentally appropriate term, I think. A kindergarten “lecture” should look quite different from a graduate class lecture. Also, notice TED talks are kept short? Probably a reason for that.
But bottom line, there is nothing wrong with a good lecture, assuming your audience thinks it is good. The problem arises when we stop caring about how our audience is responding to our lectures.
Glad to hear you can sit in the back seat sometimes, even if your knuckles are white at times as you hold tight to the hand grip
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This comment comes in two parts. Part One – There is a conspiracy, I agree. Part Two – (this part occurs jsut before reading the last just in time thoughts) I agree, there is no conspiracy. Web 2.0 puts the storytelling in the hands of students.
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