Day 4

While looking at the pioneers of modern teaching, I felt as though I could relate to the principles of teaching and learning they each supported. The three that stood out to me the most were Jane Addams, Maria Montessori, and Jean Piaget. Addams is known for her push for equal rights for minority groups and for women. She did not believe war was the right answer and she believed that technology could really play a role in advancing communication. Addams chose to focus on broadening the experiences of her students and she urged them to look at the social change and justice in the country. One thing that I want to take away from her ideas was the fact that she wanted her classroom to be connected to the community in which it served. I think that is a great reminder for all teachers to connect the classroom to the surrounding community outside of school. Finally, Addams really pushed for cultural diversity and she wanted an education that was socialized to help her students who were immigrants. I really think that Addams did God honoring work. To take the minorities and bring them up for success in America is very impressive. I liked reading about her integrity in the United States to promote equal rights and challenge the views of her fellow citizens. I think it is important to remember to treat everyone with the love of God and to not put stereotypes on them. I do believe that each child has the desire to learn and if I was placed in a diverse classroom situation, I would make sure I embraced it with the Christian worldview in mind.

Maria Montessori looked at her students and created more structured work depending on their desires. She thought that kids have great concentration and in my experience, they really do. I have seen kids sit and work for hours on a project that they are really passionate about. Montessori schools use materials that will teach them basic and hands on activities. They emphasis activities rooted in practical, sensory, and formal ideas. I liked her belief that children are “capable of sustained self-directed work in learning a particular skill” (112). To give students the opportunity to have an input in what the class offers could be very beneficial in the long run.

There are many Montessori schools in my area back home. I helped in one this past year for a few days in the semester. This particular school was initially a home at one point but they changed some areas around to offer space for other learning. Each room had a different theme and a different focus of learning such as language, kitchen, art, cooking, etc. I found it interesting to see how much knowledge the children had on basic things and life skills that maybe would not have been an emphasis for learning in the usual school focused on testing. It is important to remember that God created everything in this world as perfect and educating children in the basic and hands on experiences will help them to see and be involved in that creation. Through this learning style the children might be able to develop the special gifts that they were each given and there is room for them to grow in their own directions, not being directed by a certain curriculum.

Finally, Jean Piaget is known for his stage-learning theory of development. He started with a clinical observation of children and then developed his stages of development. There are four main stages of development; sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete-operational period, and formal-operational period. I agree with Piaget’s thoughts that children view the world differently than adults. I also think the stages offer good check points for students and give them a way to progress their own learning and take some ownership in all of it.

The sensorimotor stage is the time in a child’s life when they are just beginning to explore things and mainly through their senses. They have a great nonverbal intelligence and they use their senses to “construct simple concepts of space, time, and causality at the visual, auditory, tactile, and motor levels” (114). The preoperational stage is when speech and more operational thinking begin to improve. Children tend to group and name objects in this stage and they use symbols and signs to represent their ideas. This stage is a little more complex and higher-order thinking compared to the first stage. The third stage, the concrete-operational period, is when children start thinking in more logical and mathematical ways. They also develop more reasoning practices and experience cause and effect skills. The fourth and final stage, the formal-operational period, develops the logical thinking. They use the scientific method to explain reality and they use multivariate thinking to process plans of action. Overall, Piaget really thought that through interacting with their environment, children could build their knowledge. He urged teachers to encourage the students to experiment and explore and to make a learning environment that was filled with materials that the students could touch and use in different ways.

The article titled “State Lawmakers Make Curricular Demands of Schools” found at edweek.com (http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/05/11/30curriculum_ep.h30.html?tkn=YPUF%2BgdN5hT3AFvvZ15e6HxF0z8J3cII%2BJgY&cmp=clp-edweek) discussed the debate of what public schools were required to teach in their curriculum. There are concerns that with the curriculum already being crowded, adding more to certain sections such as issues with sex education and anti-bullying in health classes. There have also been specific lessons given to states from the Statehouse. I can understand the need for a universal curriculum; however, I see many more positives with each district doing it as they please. These positives would include:  local issues being address more, focused learning, and community input on what they would like their students to be learning. I think that if there were the main points each school was required to cover, that would be more reasonable. More and more history has to be added to the learning of the upcoming generations and changes will always need to be made, but I wonder how much the federal government needs to get involved or if these issues can be solved on a local level?