Educational Detours

Education is an industry that continues to become more streamlined and scripted.  The government pushes schools to be exactly the same.  While standards and oversight is helpful in some cases of failing schools, we also have to be careful to fight for what education is about.  Our job as teachers is to meet a set of standards, but ultimately our mission is to educate our children and prepare them to be high functioning adults in our society.

I often hear the term educational detour used in a negative way to describe a teacher who was easy to take off track.  In fact I remember a high school teacher that you could take down a tangent and it felt like you had won because he was not reciting his boxed curriculum.  It was later that I realized that he had won.  We were interested in what he was saying because we assumed we were controlling the situation.  He was teaching us concepts on civics and government, but he was letting us drive the conversation instead of doing chapter three in the book.  I realized as I reflected that ignoring the interests of your students is often taking them on a detour away from what would be most effective.

While I have times that I focus on certain subjects, I don't pass on the chance to teach other subjects along with the one that I am focusing on.  Students may get a Latin root word lesson in the middle of their math lesson.  When I am open to their interests, I know they are going to be more focused on every lesson even if that subject is not their strength.  I have received positive feedback on my evaluations that Mr. Harper isn't sure what I am teaching because I will weave my social studies, reading, and math instruction together and review concepts across our curriculum.  I am not afraid to take a detour because sometimes we need to enjoy our learning scenery as we are mastering our way from one topic to the next.

Today was one of those days.  I could tell from our morning meeting that the kids were still super excited about the lunar eclipse and "blood moon."  We talked about the fact that white light is made up of all the colors combined and that when the full moon is getting direct light from the sun it reflects as white light.  In a situation like last night the light has to bend around the earth to meet the moon.  I used their schema (prior knowledge) of a rainbow or a prism to ask them what the longest band of light is in a rainbow.  I was proud that they knew that red was the longest wavelength.  When the light has to bend further, only the longest band of color is visible creating the red color.  It has been a while since I have studied the refraction of light, but the kids could relate to this due to their knowledge of rainbows.

I don't have to teach this content, but by being responsive to their interest I earned their trust and encouraged them to ask questions.  When they know that their questions and interests will be taken seriously then students are more willing to be vulnerable when they don't understand something.  We took a twenty minute break from the scheduled curriculum, but gained so much more that will help us accomplish greater things in the future.  I don't do a lot of pretty art projects, take extra recesses, or have Fun Friday.  Despite this, my students never complain because I use that time to chase down their interests and we make learning more fun than an extra recess or an electronics day would ever be.