Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Fascinating!! Yes ... that's my word for most days. Here's my example for today's educational fascination: We were told earlier this week that there would be a national news film crew at our school. We were told that they wanted film footage of 8th grades classes, and our principal asked for any 8th grade teachers who were interested to allow the cameras into their classrooms to "roll". SO ... as I had been teaching a fun lesson last week, I decided to CHANGE what I was planning to do today and re-teach the lesson from last week. It was a lesson that involved lots of manipulatives and group work, etc. SOOOO.... near the end of the class period that was supposed to be my "filming" period (remember that I changed my lessons for the whole day to accomodate this!), my principal comes into my room and tells me that they were running out of time. Later, my principal comes to me and tells me (get this!) that the real problem was this: the film crew had walked past my room and looked in. They saw the kids working in groups and working with manipulatives and decided that they didn't want THAT on film. In fact, my principal explained to them that this approach to learning math is widely accepted as being much more effective. The film crew then informed her that, even though the research proves that manipulatives help students learn, "THE PUBLIC" don't agree with that, and don't want to see that sort of thing on the TV. I asked my principal if it would have been better if I had been giving notes on the overhead projector (what I was planning to do today anyway), and she implied that we might have been filmed if that had been the case. UGH!! What does "THE PUBLIC" think about this issue????? You MUST let me know!!
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