Student Centred Learning andddddd my thoughts

So put this into perspective, you’re a teacher and you have been taught in University that your students need to ignite their higher-order thinking skills. In order to do this, students must work with each other, collaborate with each other, communicate with each other, and present their findings to the class. All of these student centered learning techniques I mentioned, do not involve a teacher telling them how to collaborate, communicate and present. What do teachers even do? They are there to guide the students through their learning and act as a manager of the class, rather than the head honcho who holds all the knowledge and answers. Never forget that the students are the learners, the teachers, the investigators and essentially the center focus in every classroom. We are obviously shifting away from a traditional classroom because student centered learning, through discovery and experience, is being more heavily focused on than ever before. So, if students do all the work, why do teachers get paid so much for working 4 hours a day for 5 days a week and holidays/summers off? It’s just funny to look at because we are told, as future teachers, to let students discover knowledge by themselves. Teachers are having a smaller and smaller role in the classroom and getting paid more and more. Maybe it comes to a question. Do you think, eventually, that teachers would become almost unnecessary in a classroom environment? If they are necessary, would they still be called teachers or maybe just managers? Hopefully my perspective makes sense to someone else besides myself.

I really liked Susan’s excerpt in the book, interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment, where she explained how to infuse Assessment for learning into teaching. To summarize, Susan used different assessing techniques in her classroom, ranging from raising hands to traffic cards to exit cards. I like how she came to the conclusion of feedback and no grades given. Growing up, I would never think of being a teacher and not giving out grades. Maybe because I have been conditioned by the typical curriculum that we have implemented today. Fortunately, success came from not giving out grades and just giving feedback. I’ll be looking forward to trying this technique in my classroom someday. Thank you Susan!