Part of my job this year as our school’s technology coach is to be the iPad Program Facilitator. Just a somewhat fancy title for the guy who keeps the iPads up-to-date, helps teachers become familiar with the devices and strives to inspire teachers and students to use the iPads in new and creative ways.
Today as three girls from fourth grade stopped by to check out some iPads, one of the more verbal and social girls asks me, “How’s your day goin’?” I thought for a moment and said, “Great. How’s it going for you?”
She gave a shrug and a less-than-excited “Eh, it’s okay.” Seizing the opportunity to find out more about what she’s really thinking, I gave a bewildered look of surprise and asked, “Isn’t school exciting?” She quickly replied with a firm and convincing, “No!” but immediately exclaimed, “But, I love my teacher.”
And then she delivered the kicker. “It’s school. What do you expect?”
I thought for a moment and suggested that this topic would be worth discussing further. Her mind was already ahead of me as she recalls, “In Kindergarten, I thought school was lollipops!”
And they were off.
Hmmm… lots to ponder.
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“It’s school. What do you expect?” What a challenge for a fourth grade teacher. I realize after reading this that my goal would be for all of my students to want to come to school, to be afraid to miss it because they might miss something exciting. But what would they consider as exciting as lollipops? I remember my then middle school son making the same comment when he heard we had served popsicles in kindergarten. “Back when school was fun.” he said sadly. Clearly the independence and more true to life experiences in middle school didn’t add up to fun. I’m going to think of this as I plan for next week. Thanks for sharing.
I was just pondering over this thought this week. I have just moved to Pre-K and have the most enthusiastic group of children. My lessons are designed to appeal to all of their learning styles. We have cutting, role play, language, math, whole class instruction time. Why does that change as we move up grades? (I was teaching grade 2 prior to this year). I guess for me I always felt that the curriculum was too packed and I needed the more structured, formal setting. Thanks for this…something to keep thinking about!
To rpugliese,
Making the whole concept of school exciting enough for students to want to come to it seems a daunting, if not impossible, task. Remember, it’s taken years of changes in the way we educate for us to be at this point. For me, the best way I can make my students want to come to school is to make my class the one they want to come to school for. It’ll take all of us doing that, until they want to come to school for their two favorite classes, then maybe their three favorite classes, and so on. In the meantime, we can become involved in the process of making needed changes to the system — a much longer process, since we all have different ideas about what those should be. We may not be able to make school something that they’re eager to get to, but we can shoot for at least making it so they don’t despise it so much.
jblaw