The (P)Age for Learning

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.

the harnessing of social skills.

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.