I have a quote on my wall from Albert Einstein. It reads, "I never teacher my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn." I think it is really in line with many of these comments. I agree that the responsibility for learning lies within the individual, but we have to ensure that we provide the proper conditions in which to learn. I fear that decline in enthusiasm for school between elementary school to high school is a tell tale sign of us not providing these conditions. I would also suggest that this is the difference between the enthusiasm we see in the beginning teacher and the lack of it in veteran staff.
I have teachers that comment all of the time that school is not supposed to be fun. I disagree with them. Learning whether at school or anywhere else is fun and we need to structure our learning institutions so that students and teachers can have fun learning together.
We advocate to teachers to provide more opportunities for their students to be engaged in their learning, yet we do so in a large room with slide presentations to the entire staff in a darkened room. They have the option of being engaged or as in many schools I have presented, "multi-tasking" by pretending to listen to me while they correct papers.
I spent Saturday with a group of aspiring administrators. I tried to have them participate in table discussions around particular topics (mostly situations I have dealt with over the past five years) . I was pleased with some of the discussion, but troubled when several seemed to continously look at me and ask me what the "right" way to handle each situation was. Like I knew. We have convinced the adults in the building that there is a right answer and then expect them to allow creativity in the classroom. Don't get me wrong, some answers to complex problems are better than others and there are wrong ways to handle some situatinos, but if we as adults are not able to engage in creative problem solving, how can we expect our teachers to allow the students to do so. Instead of making decisions for the staff and then having sole ownership of that decision, I advocate to let the staff be part of the problem solving process and in doing so take responsibility for the change.
