In which I say "wha?"

[spotzle]

It's the fifth day of school and already O is struggling. The good news is she'll have an IEP (Individual Education Plan) done by the end of the month.

Anyway, last night during dinner we did our usual What Happened in School Today question and answering session and O told us that she has two history teachers (oh yay!) and that they aren't going to make them memorize things or pass out handout sheets.

Wha????

Now talking to O is like solving a word problem sometimes because 1) she forgets a lot (You can see why she was happy about that no memorization thing) and 2) her cognitive ability is... well, we've been over that many times before and you know that what you say is not necessarily what she hears.

So we go over what they said and what she heard a few times just so we can make sense of it and this is what we've got:

The class will pass or fail together as a group. They all have to work together in order to succeed and there will be no memorization of large chunks of data (including dates and names and places??? I don't know) or handouts*. There was also *something* about feelings in there but that made no sense at all. I think she misunderstood something they said. At least I hope so otherwise it's just poster making the entire year.

What I am understanding through this: it isn't a history class, it's a sociology experiment. I turned to S and said, "It's going to be Lord of the Flies in there." He said, "Remember if the teacher doesn't *see* you cutting off someone's ear then they can't prove it was you that did it."

Which is where O went, "Wha?"

I'm tempted to call the teachers and ask Whut up but I think I'll just wait until the parent / teacher IEP meeting.

* The school, and I don't know if this is district wide or state wide, doesn't have paper textbooks. Everything is on a flash drive or online, which is damn brilliant. So this whole we're not going to pass out papers to take home is a silly thing to get excited about when you'll have a URL to go to instead.

Comments

[karintheswede]

Sounds a bit like they're trying problem-based learning.

Love the no paper textbooks thing!

[spotzle.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like the no paper thing, too.

[adventurat.livejournal.com]

How weird. I hope it turns out to be a good thing for O, that it plays to her strengths rather than emphasizes her weaknesses.

[spotzle.livejournal.com]

I would hope so. But O is probably the weakest link in nearly any academic setting. Unless it's all poster making in which case she'll throw the curve.

Honestly, I'm even more appalled than when I read through MOK's revisionist history text book.

But I shall wait and see. I do like that there's two teachers, though.

[karintheswede]

MOK's revisionist historybook? Do tell?

[spotzle.livejournal.com]

It was full of bullet points and instafacts with wide blank margins and very large text. And when you go to the actual history part it seemed very skewed. Apparently all white males are assholes.

[karintheswede]

All white men are assholes sounds like the current consensus in all the humanities at the moment. Is v annoying, especially as the same people who tell you this tell you that you have to be careful to not let the policies and the mores of your own times skewer your view of their time.

[few.livejournal.com]

If it helps, my Modern European History teacher was adamant that we not worry about memorising dates etc. (With very few exceptions--actually, the only one I can think of is Martin Luther's 95 Theses, October 31, 1517. Clearly having few dates to worry about meant at least one of the exceptions stuck--though I did have to look up just how many theses there were; I can remember the date they were posted, but always forget the quantity. :P ) She was also fond of telling us to "read it like a novel" when assigning large chunks of homework reading.

Best teacher I ever had, actually. I took a voluntary year of Comparative Politics just to have her again.

[spotzle.livejournal.com]

Great teachers are always a treasure.

(the only date I can remember from World History is 1066)

[the-marchioness.livejournal.com]

That's certainly an interesting approach, but have no fear. It's still 10x better than my own 7th grade American history experience. Since I was in the "advanced" group of students, we only had one semester of history (in which time we were supposed to cover an entire year's worth of material) so that we could take a 'super special' class only for the advanced group. (It was actually called CREATE class but I no longer remember what each letter stood for; it was something you had to test or grade into.) While in theory this worked, in practice it did not. Mainly because my history teacher was more interested in "teaching" current events -- we never made it past page 17 of the textbook.

And by "teaching" I mean, he asked each of us to bring in three current event articles per week. Since we're all lazy, we all hunted for the shortest article we could find, only brought in one, and then spent the first 5 minutes before class comparing the articles we'd brought in. If we discovered someone else had the same one, we made sure to raise our hand first lest we risk getting called on later on and not have a spare article to share. Every now and then, he'd throw a pop quiz, but then we'd exchange it with our neighbors to grade. After we got our quizzes back, if we felt we'd done a good job, we could turn it in. If we felt we could have done better, no worries, there would be more quizzes to come so no need to turn this one in.

It was an interesting method of teaching to be sure, and no, we didn't learn any history at all -- I think the "regular" kids learned more than us. And while the optimist might argue, "But you learned current events!" I'd also point out that this is the same teacher who after one vacation, returned to school and asked, "Did you all hear what happened over break?" We threw out everything we could remember hearing in the news and after we'd exhausted all possibilities, he pulled out a copy of the National Enquirer and said, "How could you miss it?! The Loch Ness Monster had a baby!" *facepalm* I'm still not sure how we were graded in that class -- it was probably based on how well he liked you.

So yeah. Unorthodox as O's history teachers might be, I think they're employing a method that could work. And if it doesn't, well, it couldn't possibly be worse than my experience and life turned out okay for me. ;)

[spotzle.livejournal.com]

It's unorthodox to be sure... their final project is a group effort. They have to make a poster. As a group. *face palm*

I'll know more about the class in a few weeks.

[jennlynnfs.livejournal.com]

Let us know what you find out about the assignment. I'm curious to hear more of the details of it.

We're moving toward a paperless way, but we're not nearly as close as O's school. It'd be really nice.