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Let's put the joy back in teaching and learning

© Marilyn Robb

Let's put the joy back in teaching and learning.

I recently read an article in the California Educator (http://www.cta.org/CaliforniaEducator/v8... entitled 'Bring back the joy of teaching and learning'. Needless to say that title caught my eye immediately. While I was elated at the title and immediately thought that someone else was rooting for the same thing as I am, my second thought was ..'what new can anyone be saying now?'Thus I also noticed that despite all the ways I try to keep hope about educational reform work, there is still a little bit of despair to be worked out.

Even though it feels like our voices are falling on deaf ears and we should give up and give in and go along with the testing, and cramming and rote work etc. that seem to make up most education systems, I remember two important things in being an activist for any cause- that persistence is a key, and strength in numbers. So I welcomed yet another article and another voice pleading for more joy in teaching and learning.

Some of the things in the article that I liked included the opening story of a teacher who 'was trying to drill a math concept into her students' brains' when she realised one student just was not getting it. She promptly told the children to close their books and in her own words.."It's time for us to go out and play". Someone has understood both how the concentration span of the human brain is limited and the value of play in learning.

A Science teacher talks about how testing has affected her teaching and the learning. The first three chapters of the Biology textbook are supposed to be review and she must "fly through" them to get to Chapter four, where the material that will tested on the standardised tests start. But her students struggle with reading the first three chapters. Her dilemma becomes whether she should take the time to properly teach the review material in order for the new material to make sense, or rush through it as expected and hope that the students are able to learn the new work enough to pass the tests.

In another instance a student who previously had not had the chance to excel at anything built the most incredible and amazing cathedral when the class built gingerbread houses. Someone remembered the theory of multiple intelligences and that children learn in many different ways. In the words of that teacher..."Children have hearts and souls and creative minds. When you try to make them all the same through rigorous left-brain learning and drill-and-kill, you can lose that individuality, squash their self-confidence and kill their love of learning."