#foodforthought Do we really consider how our students learn in the classroom? Do we give them breaks? Allow them to stretch? Give them food/water breaks? By Ivory Toldson I don’t get it… During a district-wide in-service training, comprised of about 200 teachers, school counselors and school administrators, a man approached me during a break and said, “I’m here to listen to you, not a bunch of side chatter… please tell the room to respectfully keep quiet during the training.” I obliged. I shared the man’s concerns with the group, but I also told them that I get it. I get that you have multiple ways of receiving information and sometimes when a thought is triggered, you need to expound immediately. Not doing so might feel restrictive and actually reduce your ability to absorb the information. I get that you have different attention spans, and while the training has 10 minute breaks after every hour, some of you need to get up and stretch every 15-20 minutes. I get that you need varying doses of stimulation to maintain attention, which might require anything from a tall cup of coffee to taking a minute to forward a funny picture from your smartphone to a friend. I get that you have different lives and responsibilities, and some of you come to the training more rested than others. If you appear bored, I will not take personally, and I will not make negative assumptions or judgments about the circumstances that deprived you of a good night sleep. I get that some of you might have difficulty sitting in one place for a long period of time, and you might need to elevate your ability to attend by standing in the back, instead of sitting, especially near the end of a long day. I get that participating in a daylong training is not an ideal way for you to absorb large volumes of information, and the primary reason the training is constructed as such, is to accommodate my schedule, and to make the trainings more cost effective and logistically convenient for the district. So I get this about you, you get this about yourselves, and most of you get this about your coworkers. But, as educators, why don’t you get this about your students? I don’t get it Ivory A. Toldson
Posted on: Sat, 12 Apr 2014 15:45:27 +0000
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