Teaching is hard work. It's interesting, because I get to live in two worlds at the same time. I am completing my Masters in Education at the University of Mary Washington and finishing my second undergraduate degree--this time around in Chemistry and Biology. During my day classes, my fellow classmates are between five to ten years younger than myself. In my evening courses, most of my classmates are around my same age, if not slightly older. Because my undergraduate degree involves classes such as Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Genetics, there are quite a few pre-med, pre-dent, and pre-science students. I often listen as the undergraduate students talk and it is not unusual for individuals to converse about jobs that they would never want to do. Teaching is usually one of the careers that come up. Their reasoning, however, astounds me. I hear them criticize teaching as not challenging enough or the education not developed enough. Usually this type of talk drifts into "There are just very few good teachers," "Teaching would be boring," "Teachers are obviously not doing a good job." Where do these types of thoughts and believes originate and how have they become ubiquitous and axiomatic--an acceptable colloquial untruth.
Firstly, teaching is not easy. Teaching is an involved, complicated, creative, time-consuming, and ever-developing craft. A teacher must be "on" all the time. A teacher is a watcher, a guide, a scientist, a psychologist, a parental figure, a role model--the list of a teacher's roles is never-ending. A teacher waits in the classroom the first day of school, unaware of the students that may walk in. That teacher must work with two dozen students, creating a classroom environment and activities that very different individual students must engage. Time in the classroom cannot be used for lesson planning or test making or project planning or grading or reflecting or ... a teacher must use classroom time for students and then must use time outside of the classroom to prepare outstanding lessons for their students.
Good lesson plans take time. Objectives, projects, tests, presentations--these all take careful planning to create. If I compressed the time I worked on this WebQuest project over the course of this semester, I could easily say I worked for more than 24 hours. And this is only ONE WebQuest. If I wanted to develop multiple WebQuest projects or thematic units, I would have to invest even more time. That being said, it is time well spent! Students will love activities such as this WebQuest and their active engagement will actualize that learning is fun and relevant to their own lives. Using technology to access information parallels students' actual lives. Our lives are computerized; we are all a binary system now. My Life is Everywhere WebQuest encourages children to utilize information from the web. I provided multiple approved websites for the children, some with advanced writing meant to challenge the children. In teams, the children can use one another and context clues to understand words and meanings that might have escaped them on their own. The use of multiple web links requires that children synthesize a plurality of data to complete their mini projects.
I worried that the information was too tough for third graders, so I tested it on my two nephews. One of my nephews is in second grade and the other is in fourth grade, so I told them to work as a team to go through the website. I was not worried that they would have difficultly navigating the technology, as they often are assisting me with my apple products! I did, however, want to make sure that they were enjoying the information, that they didn't have any difficulty browsing due to an error in my creation of the WebQuest and that the projects sounded interesting to them. They readily made suggestions :) More color, more pictures, what about a video. And I made all of those additions. They enjoyed clicking on each button and finding more information, pictures, etc. I had originally had a fourth project for the students to complete requiring the children to develop mini trade agreements between countries. Over-reaching! They had difficulty understanding the instructions, and I realized that I was wanting too much from my students!
Working with my nephews gave me another idea, though. My nephews live in Dubai. Thousands of miles away, dozens of countries, and an entire ocean away. The types of things they brought up regarding water as a scarce resource was different than what I would expect from students in Virginia. Their understanding of local food was also dramatically different, considering that Dubai is a desert and nearly 100% of their crops come from other countries. Wouldn't it be fantastic and beneficial to children learning about interdependence to be able to communicate with other school children from around the world? It might take a little bit of work and coordination, but if my students could share and compare their own projects with those of students in the UAE, Malaysia, Peru, Mozambique, Croatia, and Australia--what a wonderful learning opportunity.
Firstly, teaching is not easy. Teaching is an involved, complicated, creative, time-consuming, and ever-developing craft. A teacher must be "on" all the time. A teacher is a watcher, a guide, a scientist, a psychologist, a parental figure, a role model--the list of a teacher's roles is never-ending. A teacher waits in the classroom the first day of school, unaware of the students that may walk in. That teacher must work with two dozen students, creating a classroom environment and activities that very different individual students must engage. Time in the classroom cannot be used for lesson planning or test making or project planning or grading or reflecting or ... a teacher must use classroom time for students and then must use time outside of the classroom to prepare outstanding lessons for their students.
Good lesson plans take time. Objectives, projects, tests, presentations--these all take careful planning to create. If I compressed the time I worked on this WebQuest project over the course of this semester, I could easily say I worked for more than 24 hours. And this is only ONE WebQuest. If I wanted to develop multiple WebQuest projects or thematic units, I would have to invest even more time. That being said, it is time well spent! Students will love activities such as this WebQuest and their active engagement will actualize that learning is fun and relevant to their own lives. Using technology to access information parallels students' actual lives. Our lives are computerized; we are all a binary system now. My Life is Everywhere WebQuest encourages children to utilize information from the web. I provided multiple approved websites for the children, some with advanced writing meant to challenge the children. In teams, the children can use one another and context clues to understand words and meanings that might have escaped them on their own. The use of multiple web links requires that children synthesize a plurality of data to complete their mini projects.
I worried that the information was too tough for third graders, so I tested it on my two nephews. One of my nephews is in second grade and the other is in fourth grade, so I told them to work as a team to go through the website. I was not worried that they would have difficultly navigating the technology, as they often are assisting me with my apple products! I did, however, want to make sure that they were enjoying the information, that they didn't have any difficulty browsing due to an error in my creation of the WebQuest and that the projects sounded interesting to them. They readily made suggestions :) More color, more pictures, what about a video. And I made all of those additions. They enjoyed clicking on each button and finding more information, pictures, etc. I had originally had a fourth project for the students to complete requiring the children to develop mini trade agreements between countries. Over-reaching! They had difficulty understanding the instructions, and I realized that I was wanting too much from my students!
Working with my nephews gave me another idea, though. My nephews live in Dubai. Thousands of miles away, dozens of countries, and an entire ocean away. The types of things they brought up regarding water as a scarce resource was different than what I would expect from students in Virginia. Their understanding of local food was also dramatically different, considering that Dubai is a desert and nearly 100% of their crops come from other countries. Wouldn't it be fantastic and beneficial to children learning about interdependence to be able to communicate with other school children from around the world? It might take a little bit of work and coordination, but if my students could share and compare their own projects with those of students in the UAE, Malaysia, Peru, Mozambique, Croatia, and Australia--what a wonderful learning opportunity.