Quality over quantity!

It's like we are new readers again and have to reread to understand and comprehend what is talked about. We won't have the answers all the time, so we have to go deeper and reference what we have already learned.

This reminds me of the list of the items in the other Friere reading this week, where the teacher assumes all the power and doesn't have a balance with the learners. Having modesty means you are acknowledging that there is always more out there to learn and you don't assume you know everything and are the expert on everything.

Continuing the theme of being a "lifelong learner." You are always capable of learning more and continuing to understand more about the world around you. You don't just find the answer to a question and stop, but use the answer to continue your exploration of the world around you.

Learning does not happen in isolation, it needs the context of what the author is trying to say. There needs to be the background knowledge so that the point is being made clearly and understood as the author wishes.

Understanding the "how" and "why" can help learners continue to develop the critical thinking skills that help them understand the world around them more.

Memorization is not an act of cognition, it is very surface level and doesn't require a deeper understanding and critical thinking.

In this instance, the learner would be "practicing wrong" which would instill poor habits of understanding and learning. Continuing to actively learn can help push banking concepts to the side, and instead develop good habits that promote critical thinking.

This feels like the explanation of why we are tasked with actively annotating the readings we are given, because then we are actively learning (as opposed to just skimming which is more passive and in which we aren't learning as much).

As educators, our goal should be that we are constantly inspiring our learners to want to learn more and stimulating that desire for knowledge acquisition.

Others should be aware of te world around them and not just limit their thinking to their narrow mind and perspective.

Learning is a collaborative act. We can't just stay in our own lane and expect growth and progress, we need to work together to build a better understanding of the world around us. Others perspectives are important to helping us make meaning.

In this instance, censorship comes to mind. By censoring certain types of media, there is deliberate prevention of people engaging with that type of media and following their own inquiry process with it. It is why censorship is so dangerous and should be something that educators and learners alike advocate against.

Movement and continuing to learn and grow is necessary in order to continue to actively think and have cognition events.

In undergrad, one of USF's favorite things to tell us was to always be "lifelong learners," meaning that we are always learning and bettering ourselves, no matter what stage we are in life. We may be the teacher, but we can continue to better ourselves and learn from others, including our students.

Critical thinking is a skill that learners are born with, it has to be developed through learning, creativity, and exploration.

Authenticity is key because with the authenticity, you're returning more to the idea of being passive and not making meaning in the real world.

"Background awareness" could mean anything from real-world experience to foundational skills knowledge, which help support and scaffold new knowledge that students will be learning.

Real-world application leads to higher order thinking and more understanding of the world around them.

In this are elements of Keller's ARCS model. Learners are making meaning and connection based on the relevance to their life and with real-world connection their interest is piqued so they are able to be more engaged in learning the content.

This is a great reference to how learners should be participating, there should be hands on exploration where the student voices are heard alongside the teacher, not just the teacher talking at the students.

Thinking related to Bloom's Taxonomy, memorization is not active learning and as previously mentioned, the students don't understand the how or why. You can't memorize everything!

I love the phrase "jointly responsible" used. Education is truly a team effort between everyone, it's important to hear all voices and have everyone contribute to real and authentic meaning-making.

This trend is something that is being implemented more and more in education, but there is still a lot of room to grow and continue. It's important to continue to push and work toward this, especially as teachers who often are pushing up against a system designed not for the benefit of the kids, but to get data, data, data.

Being brutally negative and rude when trying to inspire change is not going to win anyone over, it's important to be kind and explain fully when trying to change the narrative.

As previously mentioned, not everyone who uses this uses it consciously, so they might need a bit of a reminder and wake up call that they need to change. Small steps make big change.

So often there are educational leaders and influencers who think they are supporting active learning and exploration, but they are able to fool people with their charisma and likability. Rather than listening at a surface level (and passively), we need to be more aware of what they are deeply saying and how it impacts the students.

In this case, the death could be the death of the autonomy of people and thinking for themselves.

The classic line I give my third graders is "I am your teacher, not your teller." I can't just tell you information and expect you to learn, you have to work to understand and make meaning on your own.

True communication includes being able to learn from your students and having open dialogue with them, not just spoon-feeding what you know to them.

Moving away from banking concept can allow for learners to develop their own purposes through exploration and creativity. They can discover elements of the ARCS model for themselves, with the teacher as support (as opposed to demander).

Typically, teachers "prefer" the simpler lessons because it's less work on them, but we also have to ask ourselves, is it better for the students? Are we working in the best interest of the students and their futures?

Developing students ability to question what they are learning and the world around them can help them transform from passive to active learners. They begin taking more ownership of what is being learned as opposed to just mindlessly consuming and accepting.

If you want to break free from the passive cycle of the banking concept, continuing to be passive yourself and not seeking opportunities to change won't make it any better! You have to make the opportunity if there is not one and work to better yourself.

The "unknowingly" piece highlights why it is so important to consistently be checking your own practice as an educator and taking opportunities to reflect and improve so that you are able to help your students discover more and don't fall into the trap of the banking concept.

This is true, not just in adult education, but in building the foundations in education of younger students. Prioritizing rigor over exploration doesn't help learners think critically, it pushes them into drill and kill routines so they get through assignments, rather than critically understand. Building that foundation early on helps learners develop the ability to challenge this when it happens as adults.

Those that continue to want to continue the cycle of oppression continue to use the banking concept, taking advantage of the power imbalance to take away the autonomy of the learner and preventing them from understanding more about the world around them. They rely on the utilization of the banking concept and keeping that as the routine, rather than breaking free and flipping the script so that students are more actively involve in exploration and their education.

Those that want to continue to squash others and oppress others will do so by forcing them to understand one thing and taking away their autonomy and creativity, which is what the banking concept sees. This will only do a disservice to the learners in the future.

Those that want people to become mindless robot drones will not want to make education more exploratory or full of curiosity, they'll be okay with learners just being able to spit out facts and information, taking it at face value as opposed to going deeper into the knowledge.

The goal as educators should be to want to make our students better human beings and allowing them the opportunity to explore and inquire helps make them better because they get to be their own person and figure things out for themselves.

These attitudes and practices listed make me so uncomfortable thinking about being a student in a classroom like this, so very obviously learners would have a lot of issues learning if it was truly like this. Education should be collaborative where all parties are learning from each other and working together to explore the world.

Education is a team effort between student (and student's family) and teacher, which can help avoid the banking concept.

There is a big push in education that pushes teachers into the mindset that all students are capable of great things, and I feel like thinking in this mindset would help reverse "dumbing down" education and falling into the banking concept.

Absolutely! The childhood memories that we have and strong memories we have from learning, typically stem from the hands-on creativity and inquiry, not drill and killing information.

I love this metaphor because (I would hope) that most teachers agree that you would not want learners to memorize and regurgitate, but instead be active learners and take ownership of their learning. This metaphor really drives home what we typically tend to see in education with Freire's narrating statements.

Especially in math, it's important that the students not just understand what the answer is but HOW to get the answer. Related to the whole "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish, he'll always eat" saying, active learning helps students continually understand (when it's put in place).

This reminds me of what I learned in a previous course on engagement and motivation. Learners won't be able to develop motivation if they are detached from the content and there isn't meaning to them (per Keller's ARCS model of motivation).

Freire is on the nose here. In my own personal teaching practice and experience, I've seen that when I stand and talk at the students, they tend to zone out and it becomes like I'm talking to a wall. My current administration works hard to ensure we are being engaging and getting the students talking so the students don't become lifeless and intead make meaningful connections with the content.