Letting Go

I  enjoyed listening to the webinar and reading the blog post this week.  Teachers at my school  just finished reviewing and discussing the first FIP module.  This module had to do with summative and formative assessment, as well as student involvement during the learning process.  I have tried so hard to implement a variety of strategies to facilitate formative assessment practices and student directed learning throughout the year.  I was really excited to hear one of the men in the webinar ask about what to do with students that are on a different skill or developmental level when they arrive in a teacher's classroom.  The question ended up getting pushed to the side and not ever really addressed.  That has been my biggest problem this year as I try to implement effective teaching practices.  As a fourth grade teacher, my students have been pinged around to different teachers throughout their previous four years.  This causes my students to arrive with wide range of skills.  I would equate it to having one soccer team for the whole school.  On one end, you have the players who could make it professionally, and on the other, you have players who have never seen a soccer ball.  This makes it very difficult to "scrimmage", much less play the "game"!

The webinar said it best, "teachers are very uneasy right now".  It is hard to convince teachers to move away from the traditional model of teaching.  Telling them to "let go" and give the students more responsibility is like telling some to jump off a bridge.  Bottom line is, if we as teachers do not move toward this way of "school" and, instead, choose to stay where we are at, then we will, in a sense, move further away.

My favorite quote to end this post came from toward the end of the webinar when one of the men said, it is going to take "boots on the ground" to fix this, and that positive change was "NOT going to come from the top."