The Road to Learning
We are told not to “teach to the test,” but what happens if our students don’t do well on the test? When it gets to cramming time before the standardized test, teachers start to worry, but we are assured that the best preparation is good teaching all year. The problem is, what is this good teaching? Is it teaching test content? Is it embracing the needs of our learners and cultivating a significant learning environment in which they are able to learn authentically? Does the latter option lead to poor test results? If so, does that matter? What REALLY matters in education?
These are the questions that are at the core of modern education. In today’s focus on standardized testing, authentic learning is hidden. Teachers want to provide student-centered, authentic learning experiences in significant learning environments, but the pressure of the test weighs heavy. We need to rethink everything from top to bottom because Thomas (2012) says “learning is fundamentally an easy thing that we do….it is natural, and it is effortless…everywhere but school." If we are going to fix this, we need to embrace that learning is natural, and success cannot be measured by one test. The test is a measure of content knowledge, but as teachers we find ourselves at a point that we are no longer content providers because Google knows more than us. It is now our responsibility to create context rather than content so that students can learn to reshape information (Thomas, 2012). The question becomes, according to Harapnuik (2015), “Are we teaching today’s students as we taught yesterday’s? Are we robbing them of tomorrow?” It is our responsibility to teach students for the future, not merely for a test that is only a small data point in real life.
Learning should be based on passion, imagination, and constraint blended together with play as the fundamental ingredient. This is how learning occurs naturally and authentically, when teachers embrace students’ passions, allow them to imagine the “what if,” and give them the opportunity to work around obstacles (Thomas & Brown, 2011). Learning is dynamic and growing, so teachers must provide students with many opportunities to learn. A gardener plants the seeds and waters them, but the plants have to grow. A teacher provides the tools to learn, but the students have to do the learning (Bates, 2015). The learning environment is holistic with all of the pieces of the puzzle put together; we cannot minimize it to a test.
I am a teacher with passion. I show my passion through the road blocks, but it’s bumpy. A tunnel, a new culture of learning, is approaching, and through that tunnel is educational success. We need to keep pushing the gas pedal by creating significant learning environments.
References
Bates, T. [ChangSchool]. (2015, December 14). Dr. Tony Bates on building effective learning
environments [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xD_sLNGurA&feature=youtu.be
Harapnuik, D. (2015, May 8). Creating significant learning environments (CSLE) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ-c7rz7eT4
Thomas, D. [TEDx Talks]. (2012, September 12). A new culture of learning, Douglas Thomas at TEDxUFM [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM80GXlyX0U&feature=youtu.be
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace.
