Tuesday, February 28, 2006

The coffee is good! / student-centered learning

Well, I spent most of the day typesetting and when I wasn't typesetting I was running and when I wasn't running I was writing my "statement of online teaching philosophy." I talked about "student-centered learning." Really, I'd prefer to talk about the classroom as a dynamic social community where the teacher has to play many different roles: expert, manager, moderator, etc, and where the students are empowered, yes, but also accountable for their actions.

Even therapy, if it's going to work, requires active engagement on the part of the analysand. You can't just vent steam and expect to have emotional breakthroughs.

Scheesh.

Like, maybe that hostile, uptight, mediocre student really is hostile, uptight and mediocre, and maybe that other student really is upset and hostile because they asked you out and you said no.

"student-centered," "empowered," and "dynamic" are words that make me cringe. None of them are as bad as "synergy" though.


4 comments:

Jessica Smith said...

lester's house (his c-a-g-e) looks like so much fun. i think i could handle being a bird if i had a rainbow rope and your and mark's music collection to listen to. i like the new profile pic...

Anonymous said...

{ Sorry Lorraine, I have to get in touch with Rachel by using your blog for a while :)) }

Rachelll !!! I think there's a problem with your blog site ! It didn't let me to send you comments! I tried many times and of ocurse I'll keep trying :)) But anyway here is Lorraine's blog ! It's open to the public :)))))

ILI is too silent without you,guys ! I'm missing both of you!

Jessica Smith said...

"Like, maybe that hostile, uptight, mediocre student really is hostile, uptight and mediocre, and maybe that other student really is upset and hostile because they asked you out and you said no."

Yup. And maybe your female student skips classes because she's pregnant and living at her boyfriend's to avoid telling her parents.

And maybe your smart student sits in the back and pouts because his friend is in the hospital from a car crash.

student-teacher interaction is tricky & complex.

today we learned about "little red schoolhouse" stuff in pedagogy. it seemed redeemable.

next year i only have to advise a small handful of upper-level undergraduates on their theses. that's my TA assignment, at least for the fall. in the spring i'm TA'ing for a shakespeare lecture. isn't that awesome?

Anonymous said...

Ah, but student centered learning wasn't designed for good, nice and smart students, who were learning well already. At its best, SCL gives us more effective strategies for dealing with students who are struggling, troubled, or angry, or sometimes troubled, struggling, and angry. At its worst, SCL treats teachers like they are the ones solely responsible for a student's behavior, a tactic that works very well in administrative attempts to gain more control over teachers and has been used that way more and more frequently in recent years.