I Am One Of Those People!

As those who follow me on Twitter are aware, one of my many addictive devices that I have is my love of reality television and old episodes of Home and Away and Sons and Daughters.  Some may love chocolate, others alcohol.  My weakness is 80′s TV.  I am really a sad sad man.

The other day, my favourite Summer Bay High Principal (Donald Fisher) was delivering a lesson to his class.  All of his students were sitting in rows and facing the front.  He was reading directly out of a text book and the kids were not engaged or interacting with him at all.  As I was watching this occur, my first thought was “Geez these kids look bored,” and my second thought was “Shane Roberts would have a nervous breakdown if he had to teach in these conditions!”  On Friday, one of my students came to me and said “You would have hated teaching at Summer Bay High Mr Proud.”  When I asked Jack why, he simply said to me “Because everything is so unlike what we do here in 7D1”

Like many others, I also enjoyed the show Summer Heights High, which aired on the ABC a couple of years ago.  For those who haven’t seen this comedy, Summer Heights High is a Logie Award-winning^[1] Australian television mockumentary series written by and starring Chris Lilley. It is a parody of high school life epitomised by its three protagonists: effeminate and megalomaniacal “Director of Performing Arts” Mr G; self-absorbed, privileged teenager Ja’mie King; and disobedient, vulgar Tongan student Jonah Takalua. All played by Lilley, the characters never interact. It lampoons Australian high school life and many aspects of the human condition and is filmed in a documentary style, with non-actors playing supporting characters.  One of the main characters in this show was Jonah.  Jonah unfortunately had learning difficulties and special needs.  He was regularly shown working in group situations which enabled his learning to successfully take place due to the fact that his learning style was catered for.  Jonah’s culture heritage was acknowledged and things were put in place to enable him to learn if he wanted to.

But I digress.  Everything about Summer Bay High from Home and Away, smacks of traditional schooling.  Even now, in 2011, their classrooms are still the same in design and feel as it was back in the mid 80’s.  The characters have changed but the rooms have not.

When will the producers of Home and Away get aboard the transformationallearning bandwagon and start demonstrating the good practice that 21^st century teachers deliver?  I have never seen a piece of technology in a Summer Bay High School classroom, not even the trusty old overhead projector!  They really are doing us an injustice!

So to those people who know me or have read some of my blog entries, you are aware that I am a very student centred type of a teacher.  I want my kids to be active participants in their learning journey, not just passive receipents.  I also do not want my skills or lack of understanding of certain concepts or ways of learning to influence the 25 young minds that I am responsible for throughout 2011. 

So what am I up on my soapbox about?  Like every teacher, I have my strengths and weaknesses and I am very open about my weaknesses.  I am the least creative person in the world and anybody that has any creativity inspires me.  I try and provide my kids with different types of creative experiences and make the ‘boring stuff’ fun.  For example, one of our tasks last week was to use Toondoo to create cartoons of the definitions of our spelling words.  These were then placed into a wiki within our Virtual Classroom. This week we are going to use the same logic but create movies.  I am realy looking forward to seeing what they come up with.  
 
But what about the kids in the other classes around me?  Are they getting the same learning experiences? When I talk to people about my classroom and my style of teaching, I use the saying ‘hook to capture’ often.  Using technology is not always the best solution to get kids to understand concepts but if it works, am I not doing an injustice to the students under my direction?

Last year I worked collobratively on a poetry unit of work with Arlene Smerherst.  I openly admit that I am not great at teaching poetry and was able to have Arlene work virtually with my children and use her expertise and skill set to increase my students understanding.  This process really excites me and things like the Kahn Academy (video blow) floats my boat. 

So my question is: why can’t we have a community of learning where kids are responsible for accessing ‘experts’ (eg teachers) to help them along there learning journey and how can we encourage teachers and students to be a part of this?

Enjoy the video