Standards

Last week's classes were instructive, and perhaps more important, interesting. I feel that the standards that we have talked about so much were very evident in the class, and in a more tangible manner. While it's easy to read over and memorize a set of standars that are presented, "understanding" what they really mean in teaching is another thing. I think we experienced them in an interactive conversation of learning, through our community of the classroom, and it was excelent .

I say "conversation" because teaching should be a conversation between people, or specifically in our case between teachers and students. Simply imparting information to a group of students is not enough to be "real teaching" in my view; true teaching needs to be an experience of mutual exploration, a communication of ideas, and a step by step developement of concepts. One answer always follows another. Students and teacher's alike may be enlightened.

This Socratic method of instruction, continuous questioning, is effective for our education. I hope that we can put it to use ourselves for our future students. Last weeks classes were effective models of of such teaching, providing a positive sense that education should be a dynamic relationship within that community of the classroom. Not just a spoon-fed set of expectations, rubricks and "questions that will be on the test."