- Jan 2019
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marginalsyllab.us marginalsyllab.us
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we cannot overlook the importance for educational purposes of the close and intimate acquaintance got with nature at first hand, with real things and materials, with the actual processes of their manipulation, and the knowledge of their social necessities and use
I kept reading this quote over and over. Learning with a purpose. Connecting learning to real life situations. Authentic learning experiences. Why do I need to know this? How is this going to help me in real life? This is an everyday question for me. We teach to a sate curriculum. We teach to a test. But yet our administration can not understand why our students are not retaning certain information.. Student will learn if their is a purpose/interest. If they know that what they are learning means something and that they can use it some way somehow.
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There is little order of one sort where things are in process of construction; there is a certain disorder in any busy workshop; there is not silence; persons are not engaged in maintaining certain fixed physical postures; their arms are not folded; they are not holding their books thus and so. They are doing a variety of things, and there is the confusion, the bustle, that results from activity.
I agree with Dewey on this quote. If students are engaged and collaborating with fellow students a classroom should not be silent. If students are working together they are talking to one another and getting ideas off of each other and being engaged in the assignment. Isn't this what we as educators thrive for. Student engagement. To me a quiet classroom is a classroom full of students who are not actively participating in their work.
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It has a chance to affiliate itself with life, to become the child’s habitat, where he learns through directed living; instead of being only a place to learn lessons having an abstract and remote reference to some possible living to be done in the future. It gets a chance to be a miniature community, an embryonic society.
I think it is extremely important for schools to be a place where students are able to use what they learn and direct it to real life. Being a high school math teacher I am constantly asked why do I need this? when am I ever going to use it? Sometimes I actually get stuck because some of the stuff they are never going to use. Do not get me wrong there is many things that you learn in algebra and especially geometry that you can apply to real life, but why not add a class to teach students the importance to balance a check book, or budget to buy a house, or how to invest in stocks. Many district schools do not have these classes to offer because of funding. Many kids come out of high school and have no idea of the importance with some of these things.
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