Curiosity comes first. Embrace the mess. Practice reflection. (Musallam, 2013)

When I was in elementary school I remember skipping recess to read books. Why? That’s the first question everyone asks me when I share that piece of information with them. Let me assure you this, it had nothing to do with being in trouble all of the time – it did – but that was only the beginning of it.

I stayed in from recess because I discovered something I was curious about, tanks.  I’m sure it’s not hard for you to believe that a 10-year-old boy was curious about something blowing other things up. But it’s what happened next that changed everything for me.

 It took awhile for Mr. Fischer, my fourth grade teacher, to figure out why two of my friends and me continued to get in trouble so we would have to stay in for recess. Eventually he discovered it was because we enjoyed reading the books more than being out on the playground. And this is where the magic happened. The following day Mr. Fischer walked into class with a milk crate full of books. Instead of punishing us by making us stay in for recess he told us that if we behaved we could look through all the books in the crate.

Mr. Fischer had gone to the public library the night before and checked out all sorts of books on tanks, war, and everything related to it. Little did we know that Mr. Fischer understood that instructional material should be as diverse as possible to fit everyone’s need. You see Mr. Fischer had answered the exact question we are all desperately searching for. How do we motivate our students to take learning into their own hands, and thus, create a lesson plan that will help foster that growth?

What I didn’t know at that exact moment is that Mr. Fischer knew he had a lesson plan on African American History coming up. Even though one of us was Caucasian, another Hispanic, and myself African American, he found a way to use content integration so all three of us would become interested in his lessons. How might this relate to tanks you ask? Well, Mr. Fischer had mixed in books on minority troops in battle, books on the Vietnam war protests, and the Mexican American war (spoiler alert: no tanks were involved in this war). So when, we finished reading the books with tanks on the front, it led us to ask the question, “What wars were these tanks used in?” That led to another question on who was allowed to be in the tanks?” then another question came from it of why these people were fighting in the war in the first place.” This led me to reading a book on Mohammed Ali and his protest of the war.

You see, without me realizing it Mr. Fischer had used those books to cover various curriculums we were required to go over at some point that year. Based on the follow up questions we had after reading the books, he was able to put together lesson plans on the gaps in our knowledge. When it came time to work on group assignments, Mr. Fischer would separate us into different groups so others in the class could learn from the prior knowledge we already held. Mr. Fischer had Embraced the mess that comes with changing your lesson plans so your students get the most out of it.

Through those books I learned about engineering, which led to politics, which led to race, which led to being even more interested in history. And now 15 years later I’m so curious about it that I want to teach it to others. How did Mr. Fischer do it? Well that answer is really simple, he started with our own Curiosity. This was Mr. Fischer’s emergent curriculum. Curriculum that explicitly builds on interests expressed by students, rather than goals set by curriculum writers, curriculum documents, or teachers. (Seifert & Sutton, 2009)

As Ramsey Musallam says in the Ted Talk below, there are 3 rules to spark learning, and curiosity always comes first. Musallam says our greatest tool as a teacher is our students’ questions. And Mr. Fischer had taken advantage of all our questions in the best way possible.

In Education Pyschology Siefert and Sutton explain, “The main purpose of education is to develop individuals for society or develop them for their max potential.” (Seifert & Sutton, 2009) If this is the main purpose of education, Mr. Fischer did just that by allowing us to drive our own learning and using it to peak our interest in other areas as well.

  As future educators we also ask the question how do you choose and formulate actual learning objectives when it comes to an assignment? Siefert and Sutton describe two ways of doing so; either by selecting content or topics that you want students to know (the cognitive approach) or start with what you want students to do (the behavioral approach). (Seifert & Sutton, 2009)

Mr. Fischer did both and more. He allowed us to believe that we had selected the topics (the cognitive approach), then used that to steer our learning towards what he wanted to teach us. Since we started these topics by reading books (the behavioral approach), this allowed us to learn background information on the topics he planned to teach, making us more knowledgeable when they subjects we read about came up.

Because there wasn’t a set amount of goals needed to be learned, we focused on our curiosity with the topic and tried to consume as much knowledge as possible leading to our mastery of the subject. Before we knew it we went from disrupting the class with off topic conversations, to disrupting the class by being a “know it all”.

The last thing for Mr. Fischer to do was to connect the books to the curriculum and make sure we stayed interested. His lessons were like magic. Some days we walked into class and he had history videos ready for us to watch. Other days he spent the whole class lecturing, something that is never a good idea with a class of fourth graders. But because we found the content so interesting, you would never know he was just standing up in front of us discussing people’s right to vote. The variety in the way he taught the lesson only strengthened the classes knowledge of the subjects. In this sense, this was Practicing reflection and further developing our knowledge.

Few teachers were gifted in the way he was. And if you plan on working in an urban environment I suggest you try to find your own piece of magic as well. This Ted Talk may help you.

Plan for what students do, not what the teacher does. (Seifert & Sutton, 2009) This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to overlook when creating lessons. Mr. Fischer understood this better than most people and because of that I have him to thank for writing this blog post. If you have any particular lesson plans or ideas that stick out to you, feel free to leave a comment below.

References

Baxter-Bateson, T. (2017, November 09). 12 Must-See TED Talks for Teachers. Retrieved from https://www.weareteachers.com/ted-talks-teachers/

Cunningham, G. (n.d.). Chapter 7. Lesson Plans and Unit Plans: The Basis for Instruction. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/instructional-planning-quality-materials-strategies.html

Emdin, C. (2013, October). Teach teachers how to create magic. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_emdin_teach_teachers_how_to_create_magic/discussion#t-392296

Hammond, Zaretta, & Jackson, Yvette (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin, a SAGE Company.

Kelly, M. (2018, October 07). Planning, Developing, and Organizing Instruction. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/planning-and-organizing-instruction-8391

Musallam, R. (2013, April). 3 rules to spark learning. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/ramsey_musallam_3_rules_to_spark_learning#t-364624

Seifert, Kevin, & Sutton, Rosemary (2009). Educational Psychology (2nd ed.). The Saylor Foundation.