Learning vs. Knowing
This week we started our field placement at a new school called Fe y Alegria which was a placement I mentioned in one of my previous blogs. My friend Gabrielle and I are to be placed with the same teacher/classrooms together working in a science class with our teacher named Rolando. It was a fun first day as we met the 5th and 6th graders we would get to know throughout the week. The 5th graders were definitely the cutest as they were so eager to get to know us and asked us questions in Spanish and English about our interests in sports, music, schools in the US, etc. The classes we observed Rolando in were mostly concepts based in Biology and Environmental Science. They were specifically learning about malaria, where the disease was concentrated, and how it reacted with blood cells. They were also learning about pollution and water conservation. Rolando had students read a short article out loud and reviewed it together as a class, asking students to generalize the main idea of each paragraph. Afterwards they lined up to head to a computer room where Rolando played a video clip focusing on the function of protists and amoebas. They then entered into a discussion about the video and Rolando listed questions that he wanted each student to write down the answer to in their notebooks. We then ended the day by talking more to get to know some of the students and at the end of the class, talked with Rolando as well about his classes and what he thought about his students. During group activities, he allowed his students to sit in the open courtyard and do their work since he believed it helped them think more clearly and be in a setting different than the classroom (I loved that he did this!).
Our first day of observation led me to think about the role of a teacher in the classroom and specifically, who is the teacher? Thinking about this, I like to think that the students and the teacher are both learners and keepers of knowledge. They are both interdependent to each other in that they account each other for understanding the material, reflecting and building/improving upon what is being taught, being open to revision and research, and understanding that both parties are in a continuous cycle of exploring new knowledge. The teachers I have encountered while being at La Inmaculada and Fe y Alegria approached their work in different ways but with similar intentions. They approach it in a way that encourages the most student participation and critical thinking, while also working collaboratively with their peers. There was goal interdependence in that students worked together to understand the material and the teachers almost “backed off” when it came to their students learning and served to be more as a guidance than an all-knowing teacher. Especially at La Inmaculada, students were not afraid to answer or ask questions regardless of being wrong, and seemed more engaged with the material. Talking with some of the teachers afterwards, they seemed to reflect upon student-oriented teaching because they understood that all students come in with differing levels of the subject material and background knowledge. This leads to the focus of our seminar today which was about the role of reflection for a teacher and why it is important to do so. My classmates and I talked about how being reflective teachers can help us learn from our mistakes, review what worked or didn’t and to build or reconstruct upon that, and even think about how students responded to the material. But reflection is not just about thinking about what could be improved, it is also about looking at the good and what worked well for students and this goes hand in hand with the idea of a just and equitable education. It can help serve as the basis for thinking about differentiation for students and notice the cultural identity students come from and how their experiences may be different from our own. We can then use specific theories to make sense of our experiences and understand ways on changing how we teach for our students. By reflecting and changing, we also begin to think about the meaning of liberation in education and how to go against reinforced systems of oppression as mentioned by Freire and other radical scholars.
We also went in depth about the difference between learning and knowing in schools, something that I have been able to observe while at Fe y Alegria. Rolando explained to me how he has really focused on encouraging all his students to speak up more and participate in class. A lot of the times in his science classes, he has mentioned that the same students who are passionate about the subject will only answer while other students won’t, in fear of being wrong or embarrassing themselves in front of their other peers who seem know more information. In our seminar, we discussed that knowing seems to be an encompassing factor among students as it focuses on memorization and the regurgitating of information without actually absorbing the knowledge and connecting it with the world around them. This is something Rolando has focused on getting away from and more towards actual learning, where students can make concrete connections with their knowledge and the world. It is important to form a sense of inclusivity while in reflection and focus more on the learning aspect rather than the all-knowing part. By doing this, it can arouse curiosity and reflection in a productive direction in relation to who we are and making sense of our environment.
