Pondering Module 4: The Assignment

I met with the instructor Robin this week. She told me I cannot leap tall building in a single bound and bring students with me. Worse yet, she got away without helping me find the “big idea.” What do I mean by all this? Instead of thinking super big, I need to think smaller or at the level of first year students who might not even know how to write a paper much less research a topic like I was proposing. We “dumbed down” a whole lot to get where they were at academically, from her perspective. After my conversation with her [she was play acting the thinking of a new student], I would have sent her to academic success and would have hoped her tutor would get her up to speed. I would like to think high school students, at least, have the ability to write a research paper or a small blog. This left me wondering what the heck they’re teaching these kids in school these days. If a two year old can maneuver an iPad; why can’t a new college student write a 3 page research paper? My answer…oh yes they can!

Secondly, she was stating I should teach as though they had declared sociology as a major. Then I started thinking most students don’t declare a major until their second to third year in college. By the time they have their basic courses down for a general education associates degree; they have decided which discipline fits the direction they want to move in. Maybe she thought I was interested in teaching special needs students. By the time my kids were in second grade, they were at a grade level two or three years ahead of the other students. I think many students today are smarter than their teachers give them credit for. But, she got me thinking and that really was what the meeting was all about. She is really good at that.

The concepts in this assignment were pretty easy to understand. One of the guiding questions was how formative assessment could be used to help us teach expert as opposed to novice behavior or move them toward adaptive as opposed to routine expertise. This was a bit trickier to do and grasp. I think the answer was pretty simple. If you know where they are going and they know where they’re going, with guidance they will get there, if they’re engaged in the process. At the bottom of all this learning is the ability to help them think analytically by posing ill structured problems and then giving them interesting tools to solve these problems with online, even though they will no longer be able to resolve them once and for all with a capital “T” on the truth.

For example, if you watched the video of the 2 year old boy move to the items he really liked in the iPad; you could see this process of formative assessment at work with a digital tool. If a two year old can accomplish what most adults or digital immigrants cannot, these younger adults just entering college are a whole lot smarter than they get credit for. Furthermore, when the 2 year old didn’t want to do something, he just ignored his dad’s promptings. The interesting concept to ponder in all of this is…just how much they are teaching us in their first few years of junior college. My guess is they have changed the way we think about teaching and have told us what they want if we’re going to teach them. The bottom line, they have “potty” trained us in a role reversal sort of way. The next time you try to get your students interested in the subject matter, revisit this thought.

So what is the bottom line this week? Engage them; move them toward the learning goals by letting them know what it takes to get there; help them get there by adapting formative assessment and embedding it into the lesson design; believe they can do it and watch them develop the skills to behave as experts rather than novices. If you have watched children long enough and/or young adults you would be absolutely amazed at what they can do.

I think many of us have watched our parents from the eyes of a precocious child. We have played poker with them, never showing them what we were holding in our hand, while we let them win or at least let them think they were winning. Beware of the little professor that resides in every child, that child can change a whole educational system, graduate and have children of his/her own before you even realize what has happened.