Sunday, October 20, 2013
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Interview With a Veteran Teacher
Adjusting
Through the Years
Lina Cantu Cruz has watched many changes
in her classroom transpire since the beginning of her teaching career. She graduated in 1991 and completed her
Master’s in Education in 2003. She has taught
English, Speech, College Transition classes and SAT/ACT prep courses. As I started out our conversation with an
explanation that our interview was going to encompass our school system before
and after the availability of the internet, she smiled and said, “Where do I
begin?” Mrs. Cruz continued throughout
the interview describing a positive change that has impacted the way teachers
teach and the way students learn. She
did stop at one point and state that even though there were mostly positive
aspects of the internet there did come a few negatives.
When it comes to our students of today prior
knowledge is one of the areas that have changed. Mrs. Cruz remembered how she once began her
lessons by digging into her students experiences. The experiences from 20 years ago compared to
the experiences of today are widely different.
Most experiences came from their home life, something that they were
taught in school, or an event that had happened to them. The students that enter her classroom now have
had a lifetime of internet experiences. Many
of these come from the games that they play.
Her job in this technology era has been to learn about these games, what
interests her students on the internet, and then take that information and
apply it into her classroom. Mrs. Cruz
explained, “My student’s life is their computer. For me to reach them I have had to learn how
to see the world through their eyes.” In
the article If I Teach This Way, Am I
Doing My Job: Constructivism in the Classroom, it states that “Constructivist
teachers organize information around conceptual clusters of problems and
questions as opposed to facts in isolation.
Activities should be authentic (tasks should be relevant or of emerging
relevance to students). Such activities
are often problem-based rather than drill-and-practice. Instead of
concentrating on knowledge acquisition, problem-based activities allow students
to develop a deeper understanding of the knowledge domain.” (p. 7)
Mrs. Cruz described her students as being
confident when it came to working with the computer. Research, surfing, gaming, or problem solving
did not cause any of them to worry. They
are not afraid to try out a new device or try and fix a device that won’t work
but they start to stumble when they actually had to sit down and compose a
sentence. There were many contributing
factors that led to this barrier but the one that stood out most in her mind
was the usage of texting. The students
in her class would tell her that they would send and receive a total of 300 –
500 texts per day. For instance, the
usage of the letter u instead of the correct word you have become an issue when
students sit down to write an essay for class.
It has become acceptable in texts to write a shorter version of a word
and to write without correct grammar.
When Mrs. Cruz described her teaching
style from 1991 she found that the teaching styles of today have drastically
changed. Her role as a teacher has also
changed significantly. Back in 1991 she
taught using whole group instruction where she was the leader of the learning
process. Technology wasn’t available so
the information that was used was found in text books or resources available in
the library where everything was not always up to date. Mrs. Cruz described her classroom now as a
place where students work together collaboratively, make speeches, and follow
rubrics. She went on to explain that
since our classrooms are now set up with a vast array of learning styles and
levels that we must differentiate instruction.
On the Cast website it describes a type of a lesson called Universal Design for Learning (UDL). “A UDL recognizes that every learner is
unique and processes information differently. UDL is based on CAST's research
related to three primary brain networks (recognition network, strategic
network, and affective network) and the roles they play in understanding these
differences.”
Twenty years ago, students were taking standardized
tests but Mrs. Cruz felt that the schools were not being held accountable when
it came to those students that did not pass or make acceptable gains during the
year. Teachers are held accountable now
with the Texas standardized testing. All students are expected to make learning
gains including special education students and other sub populations. She realizes that many teachers are only
teaching to the test, which is a negative, but watching over all of the
students are an important aspect that was overlooked in the past.
When asked to compare the characteristics
of her students 20 years ago to students of today she concentrated mostly on
the upbringing of the kids. She felt as
though many of her students had parents that became parents at a much younger age. These parents that she is describing as
younger are blaming teachers for all the problems that their students are
causing. Many teachers are afraid to
teach as well as discipline because the parents run in to defend their children. Mrs. Cruz describes a society of parents that
are giving these students the power to halt the learning process in the classroom. Mrs. Cruz used the word entitled to describe
the students that don’t listen, work, or care because they know that their
parents will jump when asked to jump to defend their lack of effort.
Her classroom today has a very different
feel to it. The teacher is the facilitator
and her students are learning from each other.
She might start out as whole group instruction but she has found that students
collaborating together on the assignments have them learning more than she
could have ever expected. With
technology the students have no boundaries.
In the video Big Thinkers,
they described the modern classroom as a room where you are working in a group
where the group is smarter than the smartest person. Working collaboratively in this type of
environment will allow you to come up with your own solutions and use the tools
that you choose. Both Mrs. Cruz and this
video shared the idea that we must move our students past the standard
solutions that we expected yesterday.
There have been many changes in the
classroom through the years. Mrs. Cruz
described it as a necessary but difficult journey. In order for her to keep up with the
technology age she has had to change her teaching practices and theories. It was difficult because she did not grow up
with this technology and she felt as though the students were always one step
ahead of her. With a constant strive to
learn and her desire to reach all students she has learned to transform her
classroom into a collaborative learning environment that uses the internet to
reach what was known as the unreachable in the past.
References
C Sprague, D. &
Dede, C. (1999). If I teach this way, Am I doing my job: Constructivism in the
classroom. Leading and Learning,
27(1). Retrieved from the International Society for Technology in
Cast.org (2009). Model
UDL lessons. Center for Applied Special Technology. Retrieved from
Edutopia.org (nd). Big
Thinkers: Howard Gardner on Digital Youth. Retrieved from
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