Monday, July 22, 2013

Chapter 5- The Further Education of a Gearhead: From Amateur to Professional

First of all, I like the title of this chapter. I think that it suggests that learning is a process and you don't just become a "professional" overnight. The title also correlates with a theme that I found throughout the chapter: failure.

Most people view the "failure" as a bad thing. I think that we sometimes forget it is an inherent part of the learning process. As Keith told us when we made skateboards, as much as it kills him, he lets students mess up because he knows if they do, they won't make the same mistake again. We shouldn't be penalizing students for their mistakes in learning, but helping them move forward from them. I think that with failure comes perseverance. As Crawford explained in this chapter, he struggled with fixing the 1983 Honda motorcycle, none of his prior knowledge or experiences appeared to help him at first and he needed to go through his unique (and maybe filled with too many expletives for a classroom) process of overcoming barriers in order to proceed. But, he did not give up. Luckily, he had plenty of time to see the project through from start to finish so the fact that he failed at the beginning didn't mean that he wasn't going to be able to finish the job. Failure is an important part of learning and we should be giving our learners enough time to fail, persevere/push through it, and then succeed.

I also thought that it was interesting that Crawford felt his dingy and disorganized warehouse was much more conducive to inquiry and experimentation than his fancy think tank office. We spend a lot of time working on making sure our rooms are safe and comfortable for all our learners to succeed. Obviously safety is of the utmost importance in any learning experience, but this comment made me wonder what I could do to make my classroom inspire learners and foster creativity and experimentation. Maybe it's a change in the psychical set up, maybe a change in the climate of the learning environment, maybe a little bit of both?

7 comments:

  1. The WETA Workshop (the is name of the special effects team that did the Lord of the Ring movies) has a quote
    The Art of Innovation is to throw yourself at failure and miss

    If we look back I think I have learned more from my failures then my successes. Especially in my classroom... I have figured out how to teach by seeing what works. I wish they would make new teachers understand that.

    I have that issue at my school... if you come to my room it can be a "mess" at times. There is organization to it... but as I tell my Principals... you can have pristine clean room and the students will learn nothing. Or a mess one and they will learn everything....

    When I took over the library I found brand new scanners and headphones in the back room. The former librarian didn't want the kids to ruin them... so he kept them their until they became obsolete and useless.

    That is were education is heading. With the world at their finger tips... why do they need us to have them tell us only the correct answer. They can google the answer in nano seconds... the just may not know what the answer is

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  2. I just got done taking another course called Productive Thinking and the Gifted Learner. I learned a lot about creativity in the classroom (helping students with productive thinking). Lindsay’s post made me relate the big ideas of this book to my course. I watched a TED talk about how he thinks schools are killing creativity. One way schools are doing this is by not promoting failure and mistakes. We are very focused on the right answer and kids don’t feel comfortable taking risks and failing. Albert Einstein once said, “ a person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” We really need to instill creativity and taking risks to our students.

    I have to agree with Keith that I have learned the most from my failures I have made as a teacher than the successes. Just like we want our students to take risks and know that failure it OK, we as teachers need to do the same. If you’re not taking risks and trying new things, you are not growing.

    I liked the part with the wheel bearing. Matthew was told he was never let a wheel bearing spin when drying it, but was never told why. The reason I liked this is because he was told something, never told why, and so instead of not doing it, he did it to see what happened. I am sure he will never do it again, but he needed that experience or to know why he shouldn’t do it in the first place.

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    1. And how many of our students have gotten in trouble for doing exactly that. Told what not to do... and never told why... then going and doing exactly that.

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  3. After reading this chapter and then everyone's comments, I got to thinking about my own experiences. My parents were firm believers in "let him suffer and learn from his mistakes". How I ever survived the first 20 years of my life, no one can say. My Mom still marvels at the fact that we never visited the ER as I was "learning". But, I still cringe at some of the physical challenges I endured and regret some of the decisions I made. At the same time, I feel I've learned a great deal from my success' as well - without those success' I may not have been so inclined to suffer and work through future failures.

    I think about my own girls. They've never been coddled. When they fall I let them decide if they're really hurt before I pick them up(and of course encourage them to be "ok"), it's ok for puzzles to take an extra 20 minutes as they rotate that final frustrating piece around just the right way until it fits, and it's ok if they decide the mud puddle out front is our family pool. Both my girls are growing much stronger, more independent and adventurous, and more creative for it. While there are still many lessons I have to teach and certain things I have to protect them from(boys come to mind in a few years), allowing them the room to grow they've really blossomed.

    I've seen a major shift in my students expectations of me in the past 6 or 7 years. I mentioned it in an earlier post - they want me to essentially walk them through everything step by step to the right answer. While I don't do this they must have learned this behavior somewhere. There's not always going to be someone to hold their hand and guide them, so I wonder how some of these kids are going to cope on their own. Many students still work to find solutions on their own but too many have found that if they whine and play dumb long enough, someone will walk them to a solution. As I said before, how is it these are the same kids that will play a video game for hours in order to solve a level?

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    1. as a coach that exact same thing occurs. There are a lot of helicopter parents... when I kid gets hurt I never run out immediately. But parents have run past me....

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  4. It is definitely true that you learn more from your mistakes, but I think it's the toughest thing to do as a teacher. Knowing what we want students to get out of a lesson and watching them go down the wrong path is hard to do without butting in and steering them in the right direction. Not only is it tough because we know they are heading in the wrong direction, but it's also tough because we only have so much time to come to the correct answer. As Crawford mentioned multiple times, it usually takes him longer than it "should" for him to fix a problem. When you are trying to get through such a large curriculum in a short amount of time, it's tough to let kids spend 20 hours on something that should only take 10.

    I also liked the story when Crawford described having to see what happened when you let a bearing spin when it's drying. Many times we tell kids (or we've heard as kids) not to do something, and the reason why is "because I said so". Granted, if someone would have told Crawford what actually happens if he lets the bearing spin he probably wouldn't have tried it out, we can learn a valuable lesson from this. We need to let kids figure things out on their own, unless of course it can be dangerous.

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    1. * I think I've tried to post this 3 times now. I'm not sure why it never posted originally. Hopefully this works!

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