Week+3+Jenna

There is nothing like a bit of PInk Floyd to kick off a Monday morning! In an attention grabbing presentation, today's lecture posed many questions around the 'views of teaching'. The rich symbolisation of Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' set the scene for the topic; when we are introduced to Pink (the main character) as a boy in school, being humiliated by the teacher for writing poems in class. The film depicts school children wearing identical masks, in single file on a conveyor belt, until falling into a mincer. This clearly shows a more traditional view of teaching where there was a 'one style fits all' attitude, the class room taught by a domineering teacher and individualism was totally dismissed and even humiliated.

The scene is set to the song "Brick in the wall" whose lyrics include: 'We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the class room, teacher leave those kids alone". The kids rebel at the end of the clip, smashing desks burning books and the school, a very different reaction to the school kids in the second script we saw from 'School of Rock'.

I've decided not to regurgitate the entire lecture, as I seem to have started doing, but emphasise what really rang true to me this week in issues and left me scratching my head. Both views of a teacher above was a great starting point to the challenges ahead and how we, as teachers will perform out on the field. So that leads to my first head scratcher... What is relevant content? Who needs to know what and what are the limits of teachers? How do you decide what is important? What are the learning essentials that lay the foundations for life long learning? I found the example of the ten year old girl who saved hundreds of lives when she warned her mum of the tsunamis in Thailand brilliant. To apply that knowledge and have such an awareness of her environment, proved to be life saving.

In a rapidly changing environment, both physically and economically, we are training young minds for jobs that haven't been invented yet. I strongly believe our world wide responsibility is to play a preventative role in the exhaustion of the worlds resources. Surely knowing our relevant content is knowing our social responsibility as teachers and how to ensure the survival as a race. (is this getting a little heavy!) A lot of schools have student grown vegetable patches with programs teaching the importance of backyard and local food production as well as cooking and preserving that food seasonally. This is knowledge that our grandparents had however has been lost in the matter of one generation. We can reintroduce these skills a part of the basic curriculum to essential knowledge. This opportunity is exciting and bloody necessary!

I don't want to be a Mr. Macky or Mrs. Smith of my former education, as i've learnt that ' the enemy is boredom' and our responsibility as teachers is being passionate, encouraging, organised, respecting, approachable, committed, positively influential ( take a breath!!) and the list goes on. Relevance is one of the major roles that we have as teacher and i can't emphasise enough our responsibility to the next generations in equipping them for an uncertain future. That may seem a wee bit overwhelming but given this task isn't on our shoulders alone, it needs to be the integrated responsibility of parents, teacher and the entire school the job to me sounds exciting and challenging! How will we work within our environment to be those teachers that we've looked up to over the years? What responsibilities will we encourage and expect our students to take? How can we enthuse and empower kids to take ownership of their learning and responsibilities? So many questions...can i have some feedback!!!