LearnHub

I have never used the word charter, but indeed the concept. So we are all on the same page-just semantics get in the way sometimes. It really is amazing how powerful it is to give people a voice.:)

I really appreciate what you add to LearnHub. Your comments are insightful, appropriate and heartfelt. Herein lies the value of this opportunity.

I really enjoyed your last quote. Have never heard it and it brought a flood of reminiscing for me, verifying the quotation.

Hi Carmen-Thank you for your very valuable and correct comment. Rules are more likely to be followed and respected if the students own them. I agree heartily that it is time well spent. A teacher will brainstorm prior to the exercise, of course, her expectations and most of the time these same norms emerge from the students. If you are afraid they will not, when you preface the activity tell them that you have 2 that are important to you that will need to be included. Usually a mute point. In day 1, which will be released tomorrow, i talk about structures to produce student norms. You probably know these and more so I will be interested in your blog!!:)

Plato

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

Carmen, Mawstools, Peter and Harold,....like Carmen, I am really enjoying this blog!! Each of us is thoughtful and showing a lot of honesty in our comments. Interesting how often we come around to the feelings attached to remembering or NOT!! In the original article, if my memory serves me correctly, the author expressed(tongue-in-cheek) that we are upset because we are forgetting salient details about ourselves, hence shorter autobiographies. I believe that the weightiness of all of this comes from the fact that, not only is the amount of information absolutely impossible to process and remember, but that as educators, we seem, universally, to have unreasonably high expectations of ourselves. Herein lies the pressure and the “fear” of forgetfulness. It all gets back to the “Sage on the stage” concept of teaching rather than the “Guide on the side”. Couple the collective knowledge of our students and ourselves and we are doing just fine!! Cheers.

This was a very thought-provoking video and article. But I believe, that we can not let the ghosts of the past and the politicians of the present ruin the ideal that the torch should and can represent.

I have been a cooperative learning user and trainer for some years-but know that there is always so much more to learn-a new combination of an old structure and so on. I taught high school in the Oshawa/Whitby area for 34 years. Now retired and doing training for educators-mostly in Germany. To hshawjr-this is a great teaching strategy for spec ed!! I would be pleased to talk about this….I sure understand the overload “thing”.Looking forward to meeting new educators and sharing best practice. My husband Norm and I will will be adding a new lesson each week, starting next week on the topic-”the first 4 weeks of cooperative learning” We hope this might be a good starting point for new cooperative learners. We look forward to your blogs!!

I am so enjoying your dialogue with Peter. Both of you have a great vehicle for expression and draw in enriching references and visual imagery to explain your thinking. (Peter, I wish I could express myself as well in a second language)

My thoughts on memory, learning and forgetting come from long years of fretting about it. Many things contributed to this anxiety: 34 years of teaching high school, where loss of information and any visible weakness exposed your jugular, a poignant experience as a teen with a dear grandmother, ensconced in our home, and suffering from Alzheimer’s, a second career as a trainer layering complex pedagogical concepts in an interactive manner in front of an audience of 60 people after an 8 1/2 flight over the Atlantic and of course, as referenced in the article, “The Great Forgetting”, numerous embarrassing experiences, even at a young age, with people that, to this day, I can not identify.

Ultimately, it has come to this. I don't care!!! The wonderful part of having a modicum of success in your life is that I now have the courage to laugh at my forgetfulness. I always try my best. I write endless lists, which give me great comfort. I believe I am a lot more honest when I am caught short with the wrong or NO answer. And most importantly, I really am enjoying learning more, for as Peter so aptly said, it is the quality, not the quantity of what i am learning that gives me joy. I cull out of the mass of information that flows by me daily that which I need and that which connects with what what I already know. The "magic" days are those days so aptly described by Robert Browning-those "infinite moments", where like the waves on the ocean, things come together in an astoundingly satisfying and enlightening way, surprising you with the intensity of the experience, and for that wonderful moment, making your believe that you really have "got it!!"

I definitely am more reflective as I get older. I seem to be able to get this quiet and more solitary time while co-habitating with my husband. Luckily, he also enjoys private time to read and think-so it is natural for us to have time apart in our home. This has not always been so-but is one of the happy developments of 33 years together-children raised, and more time and physical space to make decisions based on my own needs rather than just on the needs of those in our home.

With good preparation on the part of the students, mentored and guided by the teacher before the instruction, students can teach students very effectively. This can be done in mini-lecture format, or in small group learning(4 students). Variety is the key: a mix of teacher/student, lecture/cooperative groups and so on. The old adage of the “Teacher always being the sage on the stage ” is so antiquated. Having said that, there is some material that is best taught by the teacher in lecture style . What makes it effective is what the teacher does after the input. Are the students given a chance to process their new learning? Is a good question posed where the students can think, write, pair and share.