Are Students Sponges?

When I told my co-worker, Bill, that I wanted to be a teacher, his memory of Mr. K– jumped to his mind. As I listened to him recall Mr. K–, I thought that I could be and hope to be Mr. K– for someone some day. I’ve at least got the right initial. I could see that this man had really moved him.

“I remember,” he said and his eyes lit up, “one history teacher that I had in high school, Mr. K–. He was like a father to me: I fixed him in my memory, the age he was when he was my teacher. I bawled when I learned that he died.”

What Bill said next stunned me.

“I’ll never forget what he said to us.” Bill paused and shook his head. He shifted in his seat and it I could see him calling up the way Mr. K– had carried himself. “Mr. K– looked at us and said, ‘You want to be sponges!’ he said, ‘You want to sit there, receive knowledge as if it were water, and wait for me to squeeze it out of you with some test! C’mon guys, you need to think for yourselves.’”

How relevant in our climate of high-stakes testing and teaching-to-the-test.

The Marketplace and Ideas

This evening, on my ride home from a long day at work, I was listening to NPR, as I often do and as my first essays Limiting Literature and Sinking a “Lifeboat”… prove.

Although, right now, I work at a bank and get little bits of economic news all day, I occasionally enjoy listening to Marketplace and decided to tune in. Their presentation of economic and financial news is more even handed and thoughtful than other media who often seem like frustrated ad men rather than journalist.

Today, though, they had an interview that startled me.

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Knowing and Understanding

“A hunter left his cabin and hiked two miles south, turned and hiked two miles west, shot a bear, and hiked two miles north back to his cabin. What color was the bear?”

If you answered, “White,” you gave the right answer. But how did you arrive at the answer?

Educators need to concern themselves as much with how their students arrived at the answer as they concern themselves whether the answer was correct.

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Praising Intellect, Praising Effort

When I was in middle and high school, perhaps even before starting with elementary school, I was a smart kid. Being smart was a major component in my identity.

Even now I can hear the voices of my mother and father praising me, “You’re so smart, Matthew.” My teachers too would tell me that I was “bright” or “smart”, one or two went so far as to say that I was “gifted.”

What if all those well meaning adults were doing me a disservice by offering me the praise that they did?

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Testing, Assessment, and Feedback

In This Essay

Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes by Alfie Kohn

“Feedback as Assessment” by Grant Wiggins

In order to begin sailing at Community Boating, a member needs to earn the Solo Rating. To earn that members need to demonstrate:

• that they can rig the mainsail on a Cape Cod Mercury by rigging a boat in the slip;
• and that they have an understanding of how boats move and of the right of way rules by passing an oral quiz, the Solo Test.

Everything one needs to learn to pass the Solo Test is taught in Shore School.

Shore School is a one hour lecture on sailing. A classroom lecture. On land. With a whiteboard. In a bay with wide garage doors that open onto the Charles River and the fleet of boats and, at least we hope, sunshine. Shore School is considered one of the more difficult courses to teach.

Last Thursday, July 23rd, I attended a seminar, “Classroom Management/Learning Styles” at Community Boating so that I can teach Shore School as well as Rigging. Marcin, the seminar presenter, spoke about the teaching style of several of Community Boating’s Shore School teachers. One stood out.

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