I found the article about Sarah Hagan, and her blog, incredibly inspiring, and also a bit intimidating! I have used lots of math games in my years teaching, but I do not do it for most of my lessons. The idea of not having a book is good, but I think she is not even going by any book. The math journal sounds fascinating. I have always wanted to do a major math journal, and have not really done it right. I think the description of her journals as "looking like bulging relics from an Indiana Jones movie." That was my fear, that they would look a mess, and now I get that they can be a journal of a years love and work. Yea!!!!
It did not seem she was using a totally constructivist approach, but then again, that level of math is not my forte, so perhaps she was.
I like that she is so into color and uses different colors for her classwork. I am also very into color in my atmosphere, and find it really important to me.
I wonder what she does for homework? We HAVE to give 45 min, of homework every night. That is even more difficult than class activities for me, because you have to make sure what they are doing for homework is exactly what is taught in class. If you play a game in class, the homework is an issue. If you are inconsistant, then parents get dismayed. I have no time to have my kids write down homework problems, because they would take forever, so I have (????) to use work I copy out ahead of time...., and thus my classwork is driven by my homework. Anyone else? Any solutions?
I would like some freedom here! Should my kids really be doing homework? Isn't the work we do in class enough for elementary? Last week there was a news article about a school in Manhattan that decided to stop giving homework. I am very interested to see what happens. Apparently some parent were upset that their kid was going to miss out. I bet the kids in Miss Hagan's class do extra work at home whether she assigns it or not!
She surely took some great freedoms to teach what and how she believes will work. When you do that, you don't really know if it will work, it is just jumping off into a abyss. I have done a bit of that with my studies this year in a split, with no real language arts material that covers what we need to cover, I have used Engineering and Science, but not to the extent that she has. I wonder what type of support or lack of support she got from her school and her community when she started to do this.
She is also beautifully commited. It would be really hard for me to live in that town! Rural Wyoming, maybe, but not a dead oil town in Oklahoma. She is a young woman too!
I agree with Charlene that it was a bit intimidating to think that there are teachers who do not use resources such as text books. To teach like that requires a lot of dedication, time, and effort. Personally, I like my text book. It saves me the time to go out and look for practice that the students might need. Our school likes to buy a new curriculum often and even though it might sound like a joke, it does have benefits for the teachers. That is, it allows us to exposure to the many approaches to curriculum out there.
ReplyDeleteI think that Sarah Hagan's passion and vision for teaching is perfect. We all have a choice of how we present curriculum to our students. Teaching is incredibly creative. That is why I am in love with teaching. Doing things the same way "over and over again" is the kiss of death to teaching and to learning. Textbooks are resources to use "here and there, as needed", but they should never guide instruction. Yes, standards are important, bu you don't need a text to guide instruction. The standards are the goal to student learning, but the journey to get there is what is the fun and the creative spark that makes learning fun. I loved the article. I love to see that people inspire despite daunting odds. That's why we do what we do. Learning should be a creative process. Those learning moments stay with us forever.
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