Brilliant or Insane?: worksheets

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Bad teacher mentors breed bad teachers

Newbie teachers are so quick to give veterans the "great teacher" label. They often hand it out as thoughtlessly as doctors, passing out stickers to toddlers after their yearly well visits.

A new teacher, whom I'm very close to, was preparing for her second year in the profession. In a recent conversation, she told me how she was getting ready for the school year.

She received help from someone who just retired from her school. "He's a great teacher," she announced enthusiastically. "He gave me all his old worksheets and tests." Now, she explained, things would be easy, as she would have less activity preparation and lesson planning.

Misguided

Because she means so much to me, I was devastated to learn that she believes that someone who uses worksheets and tests is a "great teacher." I must assume that she will bury her students with these decades-old worksheets and bombard them with boring, useless multiple-choice tests. After all, most young teachers want to emulate greatness. This is what they learn. Education professors and new teacher mentors teach the strategy: find a great teacher and do what she does.

The problem with this is twofold. One, there are very few truly great teachers. Two, this monkey-see-monkey-do approach does not lend itself to self-evaluation, research and discovery. These are the tools of great teachers -- not worksheets and tests.

I wanted so badly to look at this young teacher and say,"Please don't be that teacher. He is not great, and he will only turn you into another bad teacher." I wanted to tell her that I know that she can be so much better, but a so-called great teacher had already influenced her far more with his worksheets and tests than I could with mere words.

With great regret, I realized that her misconception of greatness may keep her from ever reaching greatness herself.

Mark Barnes is an education author and consultant and the publisher of Brilliant or Insane. Learn more about Mark on our Team page. Follow him on Twitter here.

Monday, April 30, 2012

Can you explain this worksheet?

My son brought home a math worksheet with this problem on it:

Clue 1: I am greater than 15 and less than 40.
Clue 2: If you double me, I become a number that ends in 0.
Clue 3: 1/5 of me is equal to 5.

This might be a fun group game, but I'm not sure of the value of this worksheet.

So, math people, help me out. Why would my son or anyone else ever need to know the answer to the above problem?

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Teaching without worksheets is easy

In a recent post about the misconception of greatness in teaching, I shared an anecdote about a new teacher explaining how a so-called great teacher shared all of his worksheets with her. I immediately cringed at this, because of my strong belief that worksheets and the like erase any interest students might have in the subject matter.

Want a quiet classroom? Worksheets will help.

I have written widely about how a results-only classroom uses year-long projects in place of worksheets. Some educators are skeptical, most likely because they don't want to let go of their precious files filled with the worksheets that make teaching so easy, while putting students to sleep faster than a 30-minute lecture.

Education researcher, Louis Volante, has found that among other things, worksheets have been proven to waste valuable class time and focus on teaching only rote skills (2004). Founder of MAX Teaching, Mark Forget, has suggested that worksheets eliminate the collaborative approach that is conducive to learning (2004).

My own experience tells me that worksheets are a crutch, used by traditional teachers, who have either no interest or no experience engaging students in real learning. The year-long project provides students with a menu of choices for demonstrating numerous learning outcomes over the course of an entire school year.

The teachers provides mini lessons (typically brief videos, discovery activities and models) and plenty of class time for project work. Students are engaged by the freedom that a workshop environment creates. Plus, since students help create the projects, they are intrinsically motivated to move forward with them, to watch them grow.

So, if you build a powerful year-long project that integrates learning outcomes and provides students with plenty of choice, collaboration and time to work, you'll see that teaching without worksheets is very easy.

References

Forget, M.A. (2004). Max teaching with reading and writing: classroom activities for helping

students learn new subject matter while acquiring literacy skills. Portsmouth, VA: Trafford.

Volante, Louis. Teaching to the Test: What Every Educator and Policy-maker Should Know.

Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy.