Back In My Day All They Got Was “Create Class Projects Using An Old Cat’s Head”

10 Replies to “Back In My Day All They Got Was “Create Class Projects Using An Old Cat’s Head””

1. I’d go for the creative dance, just to see what the hell this new way of teaching reading thru dance is all about. Mind boggling … sure wish I’d become a teacher now, such facinating ways to spend your time off. (Oh yeah teacher’s convention isn’t time off … they’re working)

2. I guess basket-weaving has gone out of vogue.

3. Linking literacy with creative dance isn’t necessarily as loopy as it sounds; the aim is less to teach the mechanics of reading but rather to encourage reading and interpreting what is being read. That said, if the session was on the programme at a provincial teachers’ professional development day, it was almost certainly self-regarding, politically correct, and mind-numbingly dull.

4. >>the aim is less to teach the mechanics of reading but rather to encourage reading and interpreting what is being read.
   From what I’ve noticed, young children have a built in desire to do “grown-up stuff” and nothing encourages them more than mastering the plain old mechanics of reading as a detective would crack the secret code.
   It is the bored, post-modern, narcissistic adults in their lives who feel the need to jazz things up.

5. I retired from teaching a couple years ago, and I attended my share of conventions. Some sessions were useful. Some sessions were fun. Some were boring…etc. etc. There is research to support the possibility that linking various activities that involve more than one sense can assist learning. Perhaps an example might be itemizing with your fingers when you have several things you want to remember to do on a particular day. Perhaps literacy and creative dance don’t go together at all–but who knows? Associations between math skills and music have been demonstrated quite often. So, perhaps we need to keep an open mind on this one.

6. And if that fails, there’s always “social advancement”.

7. I’ve done a fair bit study and delivery of professional training and tend to agree that by engaging more than just the intellect you get better results. That is if your audience is disengaged at the outset. Judging from the number of well educated adults who seemed to be incapable of participating in a straight forward presentation of information I’d say we have a problem and suspect that it begins with the widespread practice using such techniques where they are not needed.
   I see the problem with using these types of learning techniques with children as a matter of the wrong tools for the job.
   The trend of educators to constantly employ so called progressive learning methodologies has resulted in children who are not capable of sustaining focused attention to matters because they are never trained to do so. While the so called educators enjoy the diversity and distraction from routine children are simply inured to and become addicted to it.
   IMO a harmful situation that could be avoided.
   NORMAL HEALTHY CHILDREN will only find these exercises distracting and confusing.
   Confused and overstimulated children and disengaged adults require them!

8. How did any kids manage to learn anything way back before all this creativitousnessness?

9. My wife and I are currently home-schooling our children. The Fraser report was recently released in Ontario, and the school that our children would attend (Fairport Beach if you want to look it up) scored a 3.2 out of 10.
   In the attached newpaper article (http://newsdurhamregion.com/news/breaking_news/article/94236) there is a quote by a principal:
   “It’s an accolade and while we appreciate it, we don’t pay a great deal of attention to rankings,” said St. Francis de Sales principal David Malleau.
   St. Francis received a School of Distinction award from Garfield Weston.
   “When you judge a school, I want to see what opportunities there are for children to participate in — like a Ukrainian Easter egg club or a primary art club, or athletics,” Mr. Malleau said.
   I think it should be more important that the students are learning their reading, writing and arithmetic before we get too worried about our Ukrainian Easter Egg club.

10. A one day session on creative dancing to enhance literacy is hogwash, as most people here have discerned.
    I’ve taught a very structured, very successful literacy program for decades. I remember one principal, who advised me, when I was given a group of primary children to coach before formal assessment, “Don’t use your literacy program for this group.” [HUH!] Well, I did and the kids did very well and some ended up not going into my “formal” LD program.
    This principal is also on record as saying, “If they can’t read by grade three, they need more play.” It’s a travesty that most of the bureaucrats in the public systems are like this idiot: there’s no doubt they’re well meaning. But they also happen to be seriously WRONG. Unfortunately, they hold the balance of power and continue to wreak havoc on the whole system. The worst part of this is that, educationally, our children, especially our most challenged ones, are not getting what they really need.
    I’m not a social worker and have refused to deal with my most disadvantaged kids as if I were. So, what works? One doesn’t dumb down: lowering standards double victimizes these kids. One holds high standards for respectful behaviour and traditional skill building (the 3 Rs) and demands both compliance–now, that’s a word missing from the bureaucrats’ lexicon–and accountability. Sometimes, when dealing with a critical mass of children who behave like subversive barbarians, one has to be definitely not nice to ensure compliance.
    BTW, this approach is definitely frowned upon by the powers that be, who much prefer the fiction of “creative dance as literacy” to reality. Reality, of course, requires serious commitment to real issues and bloody hard work: “None of that, please, we’re educational bureaucrats!”