My Time at the Windsor School
By John Nelson
One thing I am certain of, is that when it comes to teaching,
there are a near infinite number of ways to do it. Although I had developed this understanding prior to going
into the Windsor School, it was definitely reaffirmed by my experiences there. The solidification of this
premise, along with the desire to be an effective educator, means that if I am
to become a person worthy of educating children, I must continuously examine
teaching strategies, tools and techniques. Having the opportunity to speak with multiple
educators at the school, mainly Mrs. N, although helpful for my awareness of strategies, was merely a drop in the bucket of potential futures for my classroom. I am not going to talk
these educators up to be gods of learning, examples that MUST be followed, nor
misguided soles in the classroom.
I am going to share what I saw and heard, in hopes of spreading their
knowledge.
In today’s classrooms the cutting edge strategies utilize
technology. While, this was
probably true for the entire history of organized classrooms, I believe the
term, technology, has come to mean
something new. When I say
technology, I am no longer referring to chalk and blackboard. Although, these took a brilliant mind to invent and understand their utility, they are no longer referred to as technological. What is deemed
technological in the present seems to be continuously overtaken by the wave of human
ingenuity moving into the future. Presently on the front
side of this wave, as I saw at the Windsor School, is computing devices and the
Internet.
When I say that the Windsor School is using computer
devices, I mean, the school is loaded with them! While I did not receive an answer for the total number
of computers in the school, the third grade classroom had a small laptop for
each student. In another
classroom, the teacher had an additional tablet, which she generously lent to
students during “free time” as a reward for hard work. The students could only access
informative programs, so the free time wasn’t quiet free. In the classrooms where every student
had a laptop, I think it was important for me to discover that although they
had the computers, they did not always use them. During the time that I was in the classroom, the computers
were tucked away on a shelf, charging.
But, from what I was told, students were working on a big writing
assignment on their computers.
They were able to access the dictionary and thesaurus program in order
to improve the quality of their writing.
Above and beyond writing, the students were reading eBooks. The school still had a library, but I
could not help but think that that would be going away soon. It was amazing to see students flipping
a page in a book with the swipe of a figure or the tap of an arrow key. For students struggling to read,
computers could read aloud.
However, this drew the focus of the teacher, and the students, if able,
were encouraged to attempt to read the text themselves. I believe students, who chose not to
read, will be able to negatively exploit this technological advancement and avoid
ever harnessing the ability to read.
But I think there is also positive to this technology as well. The students can listen to books above
their reading level. While that
may not help their reading, it surely helps them become exposed too much more
complex topics then they otherwise would.
School isn’t just about reading, writing or other
academic. There is another element
to schools. It is I personally
believe this is the most important skill to harness, but not every teacher care
to develop it. During my time at
the Windsor School I was fortunate enough to see a teacher using a program
called IPact
to teach emotions, and the beginnings of ethics. IPact, is an app that has blank formats, which educators can
fill in for any number of subjects.
In the classroom that I saw the teacher was helping students recognize
different emotional states like frustrated, tired, or energetic. The teacher had also defined terms like
share, bullying, and cooperate.
The teacher expressed to me that they believed having the understanding
of such terms was vital to the students success because she, the teacher, could
be assured that her students and herself were expressing the same emotion. I thought highly of this fundamental
building block of communication.
Along with the academics and social skills, there was an
additional manner in which I saw a teacher using technology in the
classroom. The teacher used the
kids interests and hobbies and turned it into a lesson. An effective strategy that I saw was
the use of the hugely popular game Minecraft
in the classroom. The fourth grade
classroom tasked with learning about Rome was ask by their teacher to break
into groups and create one of a number of Roman buildings, such as the
coliseum, in the virtual world of Minecraft. Furthermore they were tasked with researching the structure.
Students found the research simple
and enjoyable, since their enthusiasm was triggered with their ability to
“play” Minecraft in school. While
a majority of the class was familiar with the game, if not an outright fanatic,
there were some who had never played.
While this could be seen as an issue, it became apparent to me that it
was an opportunity for cooperation.
I saw the proficient students generously helping the less proficient
students learn. Whether or not Minecraft is a life skill, is not important;
cooperation certainly is a life skill.
The teacher was successful in harnessing cooperation by simply allowing
the children to utilize a passion, a video game, in the classroom
As discussed, technology can be used not only in multiple ways,
but also for multiple purposes. In
the Windsor School, I saw it used for standard academics, social development,
and the capture of students enthusiasm.
The techniques I witnessed were certainly helpful at broadening my scope
in to the realm of teaching.
However, as previously mentioned at the beginning of this post, these
are but an infinitesimally small number of techniques. I look forward to exposing myself to more
educators in the future. Technology
is forever changing, therefore it is the role of the effective educator to stay
on the wave of human ingenuity and continuously create new and effective
methods of engaging their students.
