Matt’s Class

Tuesday, October 27

Yeah, so today was pretty much just reading.

I was just wondering, on behalf of the theoretical public out there, whether teaching public school now involves nothing more than reading out loud to a bunch of bored kids out of an old "classic" book? Where are the lectures? The grammar exercises? Where are the particles of knowledge and how exactly is this reading pouring those particles into the receptive students' little heads?

I mean, we're just reading a book together. Is this "teaching"? In W's immortal words, "Is our children learning?"

Well, maybe I can defend myself against myself. There's actually a lot going on during these reading days:

-- We develop and ask questions on every level, from basic fact-based questions and background knowledge, to questions that require a synthesis of material from the book with real life experience and opinions.

-- We try to answer a lot of those questions in far-ranging discussions that let us brainstorm as a class about major themes; many of these questions and answers develop into full-fledged writing assignments that actually delve quite deep.

-- We learn the definitions of certain new words--but more importantly we're learning how to figure out the meanings of whole passages with many unfamiliar words by inference, without looking up definitions.

-- We're figuring out how to keep engaged amidst the chaos of total unfamiliarness. This may be the most compelling reason of them all, according to this recent NY Times article: LINK

Anyway, it's certainly true that I spend a lot more of my time these days grading writing than preparing lectures. Maybe it's justified. Maybe not. Comments?

Here's today's stuff:

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