To be or not to be....

Well let me start off by saying that I know this blog is going to begin as a bit of venting session, so if you don’t feel like hearing the confessions of a teenage phys-ed major then skip along a paragraph or two. Anyhow this venting stems from a bad mark, poorly worded comments, and a very frustrated student in the 21^st century stuck in 18th century literature trying to understand how the context has anything to do with my life as a whole, or the “big picture”. What caused these feelings, one name; SHAKESPEARE. Yes, that prolific playwright and noble English gentleman was bringing more grief then I had expected. Although I didn’t take the course as a way to find an easy way out, expanding my mind and working hard only to receive poor grades was difficult, and not in a bragging way, but not something I was entirely used too. Generally my hard work has been rewarded, with good grades, faster running times, peoples ability to see and reward my good work. However this wasn’t happening, the limitations of 1500 words, and a genre I was unfamiliar with left me feeling like I wanted to end the scene in this play that was my course.

However as I began to reflect more on what this course meant to me in a greater picture, I began to gain an understanding of high school and elementary school students frustrations. In that this course showed me how frustrating it can be to not understand a subject even though you try hard. That this  is frustration reflects how many students feel a lot of the time. How they feel left behind in a system which keeps pushing forward and fails to look at the student’s needs. (I however acknowledge that this is very different in a University context, but this experience has given me further insights that I may not have had in high school as I very much played the ‘game’ of education, and did well in succeeding in this!)

So after my poor mark, and my day of feeling glum I decided that feeling sorry for myself would not change the problem, that in this moment as a learner I had been taught that there was work to be done, and a problem to be solved the next time I put pen to paper or more accurately fingers to keys. But this ability to get over a poor mark did not come without a lot of coaching and support as well as conversations with my grader and even my professor as to how I can improve. This then brought the question up to me, “what about those kids who are too afraid to ask for help?” And thus, what is my role as a teacher to make them not only engaged in my teaching, but also willing to look for ways to improve and make themselves better. Because, I truly believe as noble and fantastic it is to teach students ‘real world’ problems and solutions, I think it is even more important to fill their tool box with resources, passion and drive to find the solutions to problems, and even search for problems to in turn seek the answers.

But how? If William Shakespeare needs to be taught, then William Shakespeare needs to be taught, however it comes back to how this is taught. How are student needs put at the forefront of learning and teaching? How does changing a lesson plan, or a final project to better reflect the needs and abilities of students while still be challenging and adhering to curriculum, but not causing so much frustration that they want to quit.

The answer quite simple, as I have alluded to in blogs past is to get to know your students, and from this become inovativve and creative in the way you teach, and how you teach it. This is where 21st centruy education comes into play. I wonder what Hamlet's Facebook page would look like? Or what Hermia's journal entry would look like after all the going-ons in the forest ! I think that as a teacher it is our role to take things that are seemingly boring and maybe irrelevant and use these to teach life skills through them. Teaching students bigger picture things, like how not being loved by someone does not mean that we should tell them we will "be their spaniel" or that power structures in these plays can lend themselves to historic learning. I think that we have the power to make things exciting and change the views of those who otherwise despise the subject matter. And take away the sense of hatred for the subject and turn it into a way in which they can take something they see as just nothing. Even sometimes if the lesson that is being taught is simply that with perseverance and dedication you can get through things that seem challenging.

The bottom line being that teaching is more than just about embedding life skills by highlighting how communication is used, or how collaboration is important. That sometimes life skills are going to be what the students take out of the lesson whether or not we intend them or not. That we as teachers sometimes need to realize that what we embed in the lesson may not be what we had intended and if this goes well it is not something that we should lay claim too. We must admit that our students had success without our planned involvement and that learning took place without us, and at the end of the day, THIS IS OKAY! Teachers and educators need to get away from everything being about them, and turn it onto the students. We focus so much on taking the focus away from curriculum and putting it on student needs but there must also be a switch from teacher self-centeredness. That we, like the students are there to learn, to make mistakes, and to gain a deeper understanding of the world around us. Each day is a new day, full of new, exciting and challenging things, and if we can let students explore this without impeding their visions. If we can do this through teaching curriculum with the intent for them to take something out of it we may not have expected, and if we can teach with the mindset that we want to change students’ lives, then WE CAN !

So to be or not to be? How does my experience relate to leading by example, taking ourselves away from the centre of the classroom, and allowing kids to explore. It suggests that even in the darkest moments of education, even when students, or we as educators feel down out and frustrated, there is always ALWAYS something to be learned, gained, and experienced, and it is by harnessing this within ourselves that we can simultaneously allow students to see the importance of seeking solutions even in the problems they do not wish to face. 

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