Week 5: Yesterday's learning environment vs. Today's #ETLEAD

Amber Hanson

Week 5

#ETLEAD

Essential Question:

How does the culture of your current teaching environment differ from the learning environment you experienced as a student?

Our initial understanding of the learning environment is developed early in life.  As a child our perception of school is molded around our own experiences as a student.  The perception begins its path of continual change.  As we grow older and some such as ourselves become teachers, we begin to realize how different the classroom is today compared to when we were a student. Simple put “Activities have changed.   Teaching methods have changed.   Behavior standards have changed.  All of this stems largely from the fact that society has changed—and schools along with it” (Fornale, 2011). Unfortunately all this change is not necessarily for the better. 

Perhaps my perception of school as a child is skewed, as we typically tend to recall the *positives*, as opposed to the negatives.  Regardless of this, I will say that I honestly do believe school for me, as a child was a lot more fun.  When comparing the teaching environment today to the learning environment I experienced as a student I feel that we are far less balanced instructionally.  While I was a student were encouraged to engage in concepts that interested us.  We spent way more time on subjects outside of the typical core subjects of reading, writing and math.  The learning environment was equally divided between other subjects including Science, Social Studies, Music, Gym and Art. 

All too soon, things began to change.  Education began a movement that focused on testing. This movement is often referred to the “standards movement”. At which time, “”Preparing to take local, state and national exams have overtaken the lives of today’s classrooms” (Ball, A). Everything we do now within our classroom is centered primarily on the end of year high stakes testing.  Educators are now being held accountable for the percentage of growth students make within their classroom each year, while being told exactly what curriculum to teach and when to teach it. More and more classrooms are having canned scripted programs forced upon us in which make promises to ‘get our students test scores up, if taught with fidelity’.  But unfortunately as a result of all this the gap that exists between under achieving students and higher achieving students tends to grow larger and larger as they progress through the grade levels.  In addition to this ‘standards movement’ educators are becoming more and more hesitant to veer away from curriculum for fear of punishment. 

As I mentioned earlier, not everything that has changed between when I was a student and today is negative.  In fact, one area that I would like to mention is that of technology.  As a student in elementary school I had never used a computer personally, nor had we anything of the like within the classroom.  That began to change, however as I entered High School.  As a result, I would still classify myself as a digital immigrant.  As a student I had brief encounters with these new tools, therefore never really felt comfortable with their use.  It wasn’t until I began taking courses in education that I really started seeing all available technology tools for their potential.  Although I am still nervous when introducing a new technology based concept within my classroom now-a-days I know that, “the trick is to figure out how to harness these new resources, which make play, questioning, and imagination the bedrocks of our new culture of learning” (Douglas & Brown, 2011). Unlike when I was a student, where technology was used scarcely within the classroom, in today’s classroom it’s not only expected, but also required.  Its not enough to incorporate technology tools as a substitute for other pieces of equipment (such examples include: using a smart board as a white board, using a document camera to only display worksheets, using a computer as just a glorified word processer). No, it is our duty in today’s classroom to incorporate technology in a meaningful fashion that not only encourages learning, but facilitates it too.  It’s important that “students and teachers enter into a collaboration or partnership with technology in order to crease a “community” that nurtures, encourages, and supports the learning process” (Hooper & Rieber, 1995).

So how does the culture of my current teaching environment differ from the learning environment I experienced as a student? In today’s classroom, unlike that of the past an emphasis on standardized testing is placed.  Included with this, is the even larger shift towards the inclusion of modern technologies.  Change is continuous, change is constant, and therefore do I necessarily believe all this change is bad?  No, because I know that without changes, we leave no opportunity for improvement.  I believe that just as educators did back when I was a student, we too are doing our best with what we are given to work with. 

References

Ball, A. Three Decades of Reach on Classroom Life: Illuminating the Classroom Communicative Lives of America’s At-Risk Students in Standford. Retrieved from http://www.stanford.edu/~arnetha/pdf/BallFinalSpencerChapter.pdf.

Douglas, T. and Brown, J.S. (2011). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.  [Kindle Edition]

Fornale, P. (2011). Classrooms Have Changed Along With Our Society in Open Salon. Retrieved from http://open.salon.com/blog/pfornale/2011/01/30/classrooms_have_changed_along_with_our_society

Hooper, S., & Rieber, L. P. (1995). Teaching with technology. In A. C. Ornstein (Ed.), Teaching: Theory into practice, (pp. 154-170). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.