Letting Go
I found this week’s read to be extremely intriguing and
mind boggling. The article this week had ample relevance in education today. “Great
Teaching Means Letting Go” written by Grant Wiggins in my opinion challenges
many school districts/state curriculums. According to Wiggins, everywhere he
goes he sees more scaffolding and prompted teaching. Are the students learning
to be independent learners? Are they utilizing analytical and strategic
thinking skills on a daily basis or are we spoon feeding them to memorize facts
in order to gain success? It is ironic I read this article today because a
colleague of mine just gave me an idea to have a “board game” day with my
students weekly. We expressed how the students are using their strategic
thinking skills enough and we are afraid that will impact them for life long
learning. I know scaffolding in most education facilities is preferred, we have
all heard of the “I do, We do, You do”. I have also watched colleagues and have
had former instructors give study guides that are apparent replicas of a
proceeding assessment. To absolutely agree with Wiggins on this topic, when you
are doing that you are setting students up to perform “script like” activities.
We are training them to memorize information not learn and synthesize
information. We are teaching them “fact fluency”. Inquiry learning is an efficient strategy to
promote independent or “unscripted” learning. Students will become eager to
learn, analyze, and analyze their own thinking. The webinar viewed, Chris
Lehmann – Inquiry: The Very First Step in the Process of Learning hit the nail
on my beliefs pertaining to the connection of inquiry learning. Lehmann states “inquiry,
at its root, is the idea of intellectual play. The idea that we can get our
hands dirty, we can ask powerful questions, we can seek out answers, and we can
really add that time and space to play with our ideas.”
References
Wiggins, Grant.(2019 March 13). Great teaching means letting go. https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/great-teaching-means-letting-go/
Connected Learning Alliance. (Producer). (2013). Chris Lehmann- inquiry the very first step in the learning process [video webinar]. Retrieved from https://educatorinnovator.org/webinars/chris-lehmann-inquiry-the-very-first-step-in-the-process-of-learning/
Iman, I absolutely agree with you. I see so many educators in my school giving study guides that are almost exact replicas of the test. What are students really learning? I sometimes find myself wanting to head down that path because I experienced it often in my own education. I have to constantly remind myself that our job is to produce autonomous learners who can influence the world they live in...not to produce students who can regurgitate facts but have no real impact on their world. When Wiggins put "letting go" into perspective by using the soccer analogy, it all made a little bit more sense with me. You simply cannot be successful if you are running on a script forever.
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