BFTP: Joy in the classroom
Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 05:56AM A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post, September 22, 2008.
Steven Wolk begins his article, "Joy in School" (Educational Leadership,Sept 08) with a great quote:
What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win the ability to read and write, if in the process the individual lose his own soul? - John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938
and goes on to ask
If the experience of "doing school" destroys children's spirit to learn, their sense of wonder, their curiosity about the world, and their willingness to care about the human condition, have we succeeded as educators, no matter how well our students do on standardized tests?
Mr. Wolk is my kinda educator. He writes that the following essentials can bring joy to students' school experience.
- Find the Pleasure in Learning
- Give Students Choice
- Let Students Create Things
- Show Off Student Work
- Take Time to Tinker
- Make School Spaces Inviting
- Get Outside
- Read Good Books
- Offer More Gym and Arts Classes
- Transform Assessment
Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote Designing Research Projects Students and Teachers Love. I am still as proud of that article as of anything I've written before or since, and it echos many of Wolk's points.
Education that is not enjoyable is a dead end street - learning on a subject will stop as soon as a child is out of range of the educational institution.
How do you bring joy to learning in your classroom, library or computer lab?
Does your school worry about increasing joy as much as it does increasing test scores? (And might there be a relation between the two???)
Reader Comments (2)
With the risk of seeming all self promoting, I did answer that question in a recent TEDx talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd-Nk2sB-vA I've used Wolk's article as well and share it often. I seriously can't imagine a more important topic for our schools.
Hi Dean,
Great talk! Thanks for sharing the link. Really liked the videos.
Keep spreading the joy. It will take a lot of us to flank the metricians.
Doug