I think the Pesky Challenge would establish a school that would be every educator’s dream. The students come to class with a strong desire to learn the material. Students would help each other learn the material that would build a learning environment in which all students are striving for a common good. Teachers would support the student’s efforts, but it is the student’s responsibility to learn the material.
Unfortunately I feel that this school is just a dream. I feel that this school would only serve the students who are a type A personality. I think that all the students would start the year trying to learn all the material, but I don’t think their efforts would not be sustained. We are becoming a society of instant gratification and I feel that within a few weeks many of the students would lose focus of the long term “reward”. This school also is under the impression that every student can master all the skills. How would special education students be able to master a whole years curriculum in only half the year? What if one student who was fooling around all semester failed the test and everyone else passed?
This challenge reminds me of my first year teaching in which my 6th grade class had do a science fair project. The students were asked to pick any topic in science and create a project on the topic by a certain date. They were allowed to pick their groups and they needed to work on their project outside of school. When the science fair arrived I had students rushing to complete the project, student’s complaining that one person did more work than another, and I did not receive the quality of projects that I desired. The next year I developed a structure in which each student was assigned a role, I created a series of dates to check the project, and I meet with each group to check for understanding. This allowed for a better quality project than the first year because many students have difficulty managing time and breaking down a project.
I thing the Pesky Challenge is a great dream, but the reality of it is that it would never work.
4 comments:
It might not work for all students, but it could work for some. Could kids be given a choice? There was an article int he Star Ledger on Sunday where 17 and 18 year olds were making tens of thousands of dollars a year playing video game soccer. The challenge might appeal to kids like that?
Ross I agree that the challenge is rather lofty. I don't know if it is practical for students to do a year's work in half the time. Before we even talk about funding a new technology program for the 2nd half of the year, we must consider how to double our output in the first half. Is the lure of tech curriculum in the 2nd half enough. I'm not so sure. This program might make sense in more of a magnet school where students have come for tech training. These type of students might be more motivated to jump through the hurdles of test prep to get to more meaningful learning in the 2nd half.
Ross, I agree that this program does appear to be a pipe dream that would nto be able to work for every student. However, given the right classroom environment, maybe a GT type class, this extra motivation could assist the students to reach their pinnacle of performance and enable them to learn a far greater quantity of information than they ever could have learned in a normal school year. I think Prensky's dream class here would need to go off on their own to do some of the regular curriculum, maybe structure the class a bit like a college course wherein students present the material that they learn to each other in order to maximize time usage. I welcome a return response at: http://sackerman.blogspot.com/
Perhaps the idea of completing a year of curriculum and test preparation in one semester is a bit much. What if the technology and the real world relevant topics were presented and implemented within the curriculum during the school year, would that be more realistic?
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