Student Centered Teaching
Student Centered Teaching
“This is not a classroom! You are not students! I am not a teacher!” I said when I first came into the first class in my life. “This is a ship sailing to SUCCESSLAND. You’re my sailors and I’m your Captain. Either we sink together or we survive together.”
A captain won’t do most of the work. Sailors aren’t passengers on the deck. To arrive to SUCCESSLAND is everyone’s responsibility. On the other hand, a captain is always there for his sailors.
This is the spirit my students had all over the year and when we made it to SUCCESSLAND, it was everybody’s achievement.
When I was a student, I was a “naughty” one who didn’t accept what teachers said. Everything raised some questions in me, which didn’t get along with teachers’ standards of a good student. That bad student became a good teacher.
Teachers cannot avoid being in the driver seat all the time if they were in the back seats all the time when they were students. We should break this chain for once and forever. By putting the students in the driver seat we are preparing a new generation of teachers who are willing to let students in control. Most teachers are willing to teach in the same way they were taught.
I teach “Elements of Literature”, a book with integrated thinking activities. However, it’s not only the materials that empower students. The same book was used by some traditional teachers and turned out to be a disaster. My “naughty” character that doesn’t obey rules helped me a lot in raising questions and issues when I was a student and enabled me to model this strategy so students became willing to follow it.
Enabling students is more practical than being an announcement to be made. Last year and during the first semester, we had that motto: “Pay It Forward”. In that semester, students were supposed to establish a chain of help. Each student was supposed to help a weaker student and ask a better student for help. This project made students find their own ways to teach the lessons to their friends. These methods they followed were more like them or they were their own. Away from repetition, this raised a sense of ownership in them. In the second term, a similar project under a different motto was launched; “It Takes Two To Tango”. Students started to form groups of two. Everything was made through these groups. An assignment of 10 questions was made by groups choosing the questions they would like to answer. Later, a journal containing answers of students from all the sections was published with the students’ names under their answers. The quizzes that included this kind of assignments were easily passed.
Some answers in the first journals were “rubbish”, but as far as a safe environment is provided, students’ answers became more acceptable. I remember when I drove my father’s car for the first time, he didn’t blame me for knocking the gate down. If he had, I would have knocked every gate I encountered down.
What really helped students in writing the reflective journals was a website devoted for the book they were studying. That website contained informational articles related to the stories in the book, which provided a kind of a background that evoked thinking. Having students read the articles in the website made them aware of different aspects of the issue discussed and consequently determined what the teacher is going to illuminate. Moreover, students were responsible of their learning.
This resulted in a war to be waged by my supervisor against me. That’s because there are no instructional books or materials that determine the steps of empowering the students. On the contrary, each group of students, not to say each student, requires a different approach, which minimizes the possibilities of having efficient materials. Instead, materials about creativity in dealing with different psychological patterns are more available and useful.
The comment that will be made is that this will increase uncertainty because of the experimental nature of this method. However, empowering students focuses on the process that leads to an outcome. As long as the process is ok, the outcome will be in hands sooner or later.
You will pass by different islands in your way to SUCCESSLAND. Once you are there, it will become your colony which you are going to build depending on what you experienced on your way to it.
“This is not a classroom! You are not students! I am not a teacher!” I said when I first came into the first class in my life. “This is a ship sailing to SUCCESSLAND. You’re my sailors and I’m your Captain. Either we sink together or we survive together.”
A captain won’t do most of the work. Sailors aren’t passengers on the deck. To arrive to SUCCESSLAND is everyone’s responsibility. On the other hand, a captain is always there for his sailors.
This is the spirit my students had all over the year and when we made it to SUCCESSLAND, it was everybody’s achievement.
When I was a student, I was a “naughty” one who didn’t accept what teachers said. Everything raised some questions in me, which didn’t get along with teachers’ standards of a good student. That bad student became a good teacher.
Teachers cannot avoid being in the driver seat all the time if they were in the back seats all the time when they were students. We should break this chain for once and forever. By putting the students in the driver seat we are preparing a new generation of teachers who are willing to let students in control. Most teachers are willing to teach in the same way they were taught.
I teach “Elements of Literature”, a book with integrated thinking activities. However, it’s not only the materials that empower students. The same book was used by some traditional teachers and turned out to be a disaster. My “naughty” character that doesn’t obey rules helped me a lot in raising questions and issues when I was a student and enabled me to model this strategy so students became willing to follow it.
Enabling students is more practical than being an announcement to be made. Last year and during the first semester, we had that motto: “Pay It Forward”. In that semester, students were supposed to establish a chain of help. Each student was supposed to help a weaker student and ask a better student for help. This project made students find their own ways to teach the lessons to their friends. These methods they followed were more like them or they were their own. Away from repetition, this raised a sense of ownership in them. In the second term, a similar project under a different motto was launched; “It Takes Two To Tango”. Students started to form groups of two. Everything was made through these groups. An assignment of 10 questions was made by groups choosing the questions they would like to answer. Later, a journal containing answers of students from all the sections was published with the students’ names under their answers. The quizzes that included this kind of assignments were easily passed.
Some answers in the first journals were “rubbish”, but as far as a safe environment is provided, students’ answers became more acceptable. I remember when I drove my father’s car for the first time, he didn’t blame me for knocking the gate down. If he had, I would have knocked every gate I encountered down.
What really helped students in writing the reflective journals was a website devoted for the book they were studying. That website contained informational articles related to the stories in the book, which provided a kind of a background that evoked thinking. Having students read the articles in the website made them aware of different aspects of the issue discussed and consequently determined what the teacher is going to illuminate. Moreover, students were responsible of their learning.
This resulted in a war to be waged by my supervisor against me. That’s because there are no instructional books or materials that determine the steps of empowering the students. On the contrary, each group of students, not to say each student, requires a different approach, which minimizes the possibilities of having efficient materials. Instead, materials about creativity in dealing with different psychological patterns are more available and useful.
The comment that will be made is that this will increase uncertainty because of the experimental nature of this method. However, empowering students focuses on the process that leads to an outcome. As long as the process is ok, the outcome will be in hands sooner or later.
You will pass by different islands in your way to SUCCESSLAND. Once you are there, it will become your colony which you are going to build depending on what you experienced on your way to it.
posted by Mouhammad Utmah @ 8:31 AM
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