Have
you ever tried to teach your lesson, but ran into resistance from your
students? Have you been halfway into
your well-prepared lesson about “Benjamin Franklin”, or “osmosis”, or “how to
reduce fractions”, or “Huckleberry Finn”…and had your students take the class
off-track with questions like:
“Why
do we have to learn this stuff, anyways?”
“My
uncle says school is a complete waste of time.
He quit when he was 15 and says he turned out fine…why do we even HAVE
to go to school?”
“I
don’t understand why I can’t have my cell phone out in class. That’s just a stupid rule!” (O.K., maybe they are not all questions!)
If you
had the time, you would explain all of the reasons why kids need an education,
or why certain rules exist…but you DON’T have the time. You can’t afford to try to answer these
questions, for fear that your attempt will ignite a debate or impromptu “class
discussion” that has nothing to do with the material you are trying to
teach…the material that your students will be tested on…the concepts,
standards, and benchmarks that the state will be measuring “student mastery”
of.
What
do you do instead? Most of the time, you
will try a short answer like:
“We
learn History because history is always repeating itself, so we learn from our
mistakes.”
“You
use Math every day.”
“Studying
literature will make you a well-rounded person.”
“We
follow rules in school to prepare you for the ‘real world’, where you will
follow your boss’ rules.”
These
short answers do not do the student’s question justice. You know it, and (worst of all) the students
know it, too. What if you had access to
the answers to all possible student questions, photocopied and available in
folders in your file cabinet? Whenever a
student asked an off-topic question, you could deliver the answer in seconds
without wasting a moment of class time...would that be a win/win? You bet it would!
I have
written a sample of what my vision would look like, entitled “Why Do We Have To
Go To School?” You can download it for
FREE if you click on the following link, and enter your first name and email
address:
http://www.instantsqueezepagegenerator.com/displaysp.php?m=64629&s=55496
As an
added bonus, your email address will be added to my list to receive weekly
newsletters about the latest trends in education, and all the free stuff I can
find for teachers on the Internet. If
you haven’t guessed it by now, you will learn this about me…I am all about
finding free stuff for teachers! We
don’t get paid enough to begin with, then we end up spending hundreds of
dollars of our OWN money on materials for our students. The system stinks…so I have taken it upon
myself to change it.
If you
want a more detailed explanation of what my e-book contains, you can watch a
video of me at this address:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jVX7x6uMOU
I
explain all of the uses for my “Why?” e-book, and the reasons why I picked
these particular four questions as the launching point for my project. If you have a particular “Why?” question that
you want to appear in my e-book, send it to me at newteacherhelp@yahoo.com, and I will
put it in! I will even publish your name
with it if you so desire.
Before I go…I want to stress one thing about summer vacation. With all of the extra work that teachers are responsible for during the summer months (workshops, summer school, etc.) teachers sometimes do not get enough time to “recharge” their batteries. Make this a priority during the summer…go at least a week without thinking about anything school-related at all! I know it is tough, but the benefits are huge. Why not start today? Take a week off (mentally), and we’ll talk to you later!
