Today I attended a training with the purpose of being introduced to a piece of software that I’ve been using daily for a year now. (Let that sink in for a minute…) Because of the sheer number of people accessing the same website on the same network, it goes without saying that things were very slow. Compound slow network speed with an audience that has (mostly) been using the “new” software prior to their “introduction” to it this morning. The result? Dozens of teachers who were attending but none that were engaged.
This made me think about our classrooms. We all say that we want student engagement and we want them to be active learners, but at the end of the day, what we really want is for them to fill chairs. Part of your accountability rating is based on how many times every chair was filled and I don’t see anything measuring how productive our students are. This week (in-service) I have nine meetings or workshops. This does not count impromptu meetings that are frequently raising their ugly heads. The purpose of these meetings, as exemplified by this morning, is about attendance. If it was about improving classroom instruction or student achievement/learning, you wouldn’t mandate my attendance at a training I don’t need. But we do that to our kids, don’t we?
Students are required to be in class 90+% of the time. With that high level of attendance, you would think students should be able to create something astounding. But they aren’t. At least not all the time.
Richard Branson isn’t brilliant all the time. He doesn’t even show up for work all the time. Why? Because he doesn’t need to. His flashes of brilliance (and even his tremendous failures) don’t happen on a 9-5 schedule or a 40-hour workweek.
Student creativity cannot be confined to a certain place or time. Student productivity is independent of the walls of your classroom during the time you expect them there. Yet we wonder why we can’t get them to do homework! We have told them, “learning only happens during this time” whether we’ve realized it or not.
What is more important to you: students showing up for class and putting in their time? or creating original work?
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Greg Garner 