Page 7 - Priorities 2

Teaching is more than subject matter
Dr. Cody’s training is Jesuit. But he has a Benedictine inclination to look at essentials when he talks about education. The essential element in suc- cessful education is the individuality of each student, he says.
To really teach, the instructor has to start where the student is, and each new student is a puzzle. What does the youngster already know about the subject? How does he/she learn best? Some students are natural listeners, others learn by observing, others by working hands-on, and so forth. What are the stu- dent’s academic skills? That is, what are his/her tech- niques for memorizing, analyzing, organizing papers and thoughts? How about this young person’s inter- ests, cultural background, family life, personal goals, personality type (shy? leader? top-down thinker? start-with-specifics thinker?), special skills?
The better a teacher is at knowing and using this information, the more the student will learn, Dr. Cody believes.
“Educators have a variety of good tools that help assess these facets of student learning, but we have tended to think of them as the counselor’s tools. In the future, I hope counselors will be training teachers to use this information directly. We know a variety of good ways to teach that address these specifics about an individual,” he says.
Forgettable assignments are too common
One study of ninth and tenth graders (in another state) indicated that they forgot within two weeks eighty-five percent of what they learned in their liter- ature class. In another study, an individual student was shown to be discussing the course material only about one minute out of a fifty-minute period.
A relationship exists, and it is the key to finding more time for education, Dr. Cody says. Often, a teacher thinks the class is “discussing” but from the student’s point of view they are just “reciting” — repeating back what they read, saying what they know the teacher wants to hear. Replace that “down
time” with assignments that require students’ brains to be actively in gear and schools may be able to accomplish all those goals the Carnegie Commission set forth, Dr. Cody says.
The new assignments may take kids out of class- rooms, away from books, encourage them to compare Shakespeare with Pearl Jam or do multi-media spec- taculars as well as term papers. The basics will still be in there and schools still have to monitor them, Dr. Cody says.
“I might sound like a back-to-basics educator sometimes because I think certain skills are essential — the ability to write and speak well, for example. But the cultural literacy tests that ask students for knowledge of tons of random facts are measuring the wrong thing.
“Personally, I think all students need an internal time line of history, a sort of framework into which they can insert knowledge as they collect it. Then, they need an excellent grasp of where and how to find specific information, and how to evaluate it. That is the basic skill, not the facts themselves."
One outcome Dr. Cody is hoping will result from his months on the commission is greater appreciation of the diversity in the nation’s educational system. There is room under the umbrella of “good educa- tion”, as the commission defines it, for many kinds of schools — religious and private schools among them, he emphasizes.
He takes as a positive sign the commission’s deci- sion, after much debate, to say nothing on the subject of voucher plans or tax relief for families paying pri- vate school tuition.
A private school educator who has long main- tained ties to and an interest in the U.S. public schools, Dr. Cody believes that most have more in commonthantheyknow. Hewouldliketoseemore sharing of ideas and resources on both sides.
"To really teach, the instructor has to start where the student is, and each new stu- dent is a puzzle."
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