#TBT

Below is my class discussion board post with the prompt being about how the COVA model might work. If you want to know what I am talking about in the lower half of this post, watch this video first:

Cynicism

The COVA model is a great way to get students to dive deeper using different philosophies of teaching and learning: scaffolding, critical thinking, intrinsic motivation, learning through teaching, and problem solving. The students have an opportunity to feel engaged and take ownership for what and how they learn. They are their own teachers and the teacher is more of a facilitator or guide.

I especially like the Bray and McClaskey (2014) article that describes the stages of creating a personalized learning environment in three stages: teacher-centered, learner-centered, then learner-driven. It is applicable because it describes a way where the students can decide what and how they learn, but still stay on topic for things they are supposed to be learning, like keeping up with the core standards, for example.

The cynic in me wonders how the class be able to keep up with everything that needs to be learned, even with technology. It seems like a very good concept, getting the students to teach themselves through diving deeper through discussions, projects, and problem solving, but is it possible to get that deep into a topic and stay on pace with the necessary curriculum? I have no idea. I have never been tried, but the learning experiences I have been around whether it be academics or athletics, doesn’t seem to allow for that much back-and-forthing.

Continuing with my cynicism… I didn’t like Godin’s video very much… The “why” of the talk was to get people to think about the question “What is school for?” He may have got me to think about that question (though I have for a long time), I’m going to bullet point all the things I didn’t like about the lecture, even though I think a lot of you will from here on think I’m a jerk, and being picky, and missing the point, and it’s going to get long-winded, so there’s a good chance you won’t read it all anyway. Oh well:

-In Godin’s opening line, he alludes to the point that for a long time education was about obedience: “Good morning, Mr. Godin.” Maybe there is the aspect of obedience that is a little over-the-top, but there are also the ideas of FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS and being polite, or having MANNERS. Some would argue that, those are good things to learn, and it doesn’t always happen these days.

-Godin: “Everyone seems to think they know what school is for, but we’re not going to make anything happen until we can all agree about how we got here and where we’re going”So you shun obedience, but you want us ALL to agree on what school was and where it is heading?

-After the hammer example Godin says, “And that is what she (the teacher) believed school was for. School was about teaching obedience.” How does he know what SHE believed school was for? And although the students might not have learned about remainders, they may have learned about hammering, using hand-eye coordination, tools, construction, and consequences of not following directions. Some would argue that sometimes the process and experience of the lesson is more important the lesson itself.

-In the hand-raising experiment Godin did, he asked people to raise their hand as high as they could. He then asked them to raise it a little bit higher. “You held back because you were taught since you were 3 years old to hold a little bit back. Because if you do everything, if you put all out, then your parent, or your teacher, or your coach, or your boss, is going to ask for a little bit more, aren’t they.” And that’s a product of the industrial age. What?!? I would bet money that most of the people in there didn’t hold back because they had pacing themselves in mind. And that more of them held back because it wouldn’t be cool, or socially acceptable to truly put their hands up as high as they could. (Or maybe they might have if they had learned to be “obedient”)

-He makes fun of the text book “why would you give them this?” Why wouldn’t you give them a resource that contains a wide array of details on a particular topic, especially in times where there was no such thing as Wikipedia? The students don’t have to read the thing cover-to-cover if you don’t want them to. Some people can’t afford to have computers or the internet. Now what? Not everyone can go to the bourgie public school that your kids went to, where there were only 18 kids in a 5th grade class in New York City.

-If it’s work, they try to figure how to do less. And if it’s art, we try to figure out how to do more.” He has clearly never taught an art class.“

-We don’t know what a good college is but we know what a famous college is because someone ranked them as famous or because they have a football team that is famous…Just so we can get a famous brand name that has no relevance to success or happiness. You don’t get to decide what I think determines success or happiness. Some would argue that higher education as a whole is arbitrary, but what a lot of these “famous” colleges have is a broad network. If we’re talking vocation, maybe a broad network is what people are looking for.“

-Every day we send kids to school and say ‘do not figure it out. Do not ask questions I do not know the answer to. Do not look it up. Do not vary from the curriculum. And better, better, better, better, better comply. Fit in. Be like your peers. Do what you’re told, because I must process you, and everything in my evaluation is based on whether or not I processed you properly” Do we? Really? 

-“Until we can agree what school is for, we’re not going to get what we need."

My opinion: this entire speech is a red herring. Mr. Godin is a business man, and clearly a very good business man. He used a bunch of examples to make people say “hmmm,” but many or most of the examples seemed non-sequitur. To me, they felt like a way to build his brand or his rhetoric to sell more books; to make more appearances. He sure has done both. I can’t knock Mr. Bodin. He is clearly very smart and done well for himself. I just didn’t like this particular speech.

Work Cited

Godin, S. (2012). Stop Stealing Dreams - Seth Godin @ TEDx Youth at BFS. TEDx Youth. https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc.

Bray, B & McClaskey, K. (2014). Personalize Your Learning Environment. ISTE. https://www.iste.org/explore/articledetail?articleid=11.