Teaching Methods...
Cowboy or Cookie-Cutter?

Really good teaching methods require more than just doing a certain thing. You need to start with a philosophical basis that infuses you with enery to make your classroom come alive, no matter what method you choose

School Sucks is the name of one of the first web sites devoted to providing students with pre-written papers and essays. The title and the technology vividly mirrored the attitudes and actions of a significant, and growing number of very good students. School is something they do until sports or “hanging out” begins.Even the polite and ambitious students often do just enough to get their expected grade, then do a brain shut down once the academic nature of a course exceeded their perceived needs.

This rapid technology and attitude change has forced teachers to create a radically new arsenal of tricks and techniques as new teaching methods are developed to bring students into the arena of impact learning. A few years ago I accused kids of being apathetic. I was wrong. It isn’t apathy that drives them to diversion. It’s something more insidious and hurtful.

I don’t claim to know all the answers of how to teach the affluent society kids. Yikes! I don’t even know half the questions. I know this, however, things are different today; radically different. Because of this difference, we’re forced to create astounding change in our teaching methods and attitudes.

Ironically that astounding change can’t be overtly competitive with the societal images that bombard our students. Face it, we can’t compete with MTV or the coolest new video action game.

Our classrooms need to have a sense of adventure that is expectantly real to those who enter. Cowboys worked for the rancher, they did their job; tending the cattle, branding, rounding up, building… yet each cowboy was his own man, an individual whose own story invoked intrigue and admiration.

Teachers and administrators, unfortunately, are more often like cookies than cowboys. Cut from the same tin mold we line up an array of knowledge-givers differentiated only by the time of day the students sit before us. Our teaching methods come from some book or are residual from years gone by. They may not even be anywhere near the type required by a particular group of students.

Admittedly, the mold is hard to break. Administrators have “professional expectations” of the teaching methods that teachers use. Being on time, filling out all the forms, doing hall duty and making sure the lunch money comes out right are often the "lofty" expectations that we have.

Believe me, those aren't the things that make you a good teacher!

Parents want us to fix all that’s wrong with their kid while imparting enough knowledge that they can get the SAT grade sufficient for entrance to an Ivy League school. Boards of education, especially in Christian education, pay salaries low enough to drain excess energy from potential mold breakers as we work second jobs or deal with families in which both adults must work.

Teachers themselves hold to a historical model of curriculum dispensing, classroom management and teaching methods that create a legacy of safe conformity.

The challenge of this site is to encourage a few good teachers and adventuresome administrators to shatter the mold, even if in only a corner of the cookie. Maybe even emerge with a new mold. Transcend the myopic “professionalism” of predictable administrators and teachers, align parents with confidence in our unique abilities and live in freedom from hierarchially impressed restrictions.

Having slashed away with that rather harsh indictment, let me now say that the process of bringing our own adventure into the school scene can be quietly, almost gently, accomplished.

It’s not about bells and whistles. No snake oil potions or magic spells need be applied. We can do all those expected “professional” actions, follow the school board policies and be traditional enough to give parents confidence. Yet in our own snug corner of the world adventure of a new sort can bring our students with us as we choose paths not yet explored.

There are some guiding principles that must be followed as we explore this quest of develoing the teaching methods that make school a memorable adventure.

• We must continue learning about familiar terrain.
• We must understand how that familiar terrain has radically changed.
• We must get to know some of our students at a deeper level.
• Some of our students must get to know us at a deeper, maybe uneasy, level.
• We must learn to savor the risk as much as we bask in the reward.

We don’t need to be rabble-rousing rebels. Quiet revolutionaries will do just fine. In one sense this site is a compiled journal of the walk we have had in our teaching careers.

very little time is spent musing on educational theory. Mostly we share the events of a particular situation, show the actual result of the interactions, then leave to the reader the assessment of how that type of event could be used in your own classroom adventure.

More important than the actual specifics of what we share, however, is the hope that you will get the mood, the energy, of what’s in these pages.

There are three compelling activities that bring the above concepts to fruition.

First we must spend time thinking in a relaxed and enjoyable state of mind. Fishing or hiking will do just nicely for me, thank you.

Then we must do considerable writing. We must write frequently, and deeply, and passionately.

Finally we must risk sharing those thoughts within the appropriate forum.

Sounds almost too simple, but it works. Walk with us, give it a try, and perhaps we will all emerge on the other side traveling a higher, more adventuresome road using teaching methods that excite and also give great content.

Leave "Teaching Methods" and Return to Teachers Page