Response to Heather J. Robinson Reading

"First Comes Learning," is the motto at Robinson's school and it is a good motto.

Before I begin talking about what I like and dislike about her changes in teaching methods I will first talk about those grades listed on Table 4.1. Am I reading it correctly?! From my understanding, in the final exam 56 out of 64 students failed the exam when she did primarily lecture style lessons. That's 88%. When she changed over to the new instructional method, the semester B failure percentage was 38% and semester A failure rate was 24%. My math teachers all taught similarly to Robinson's original teaching style and I'm positive the failure rate was no where near 88%. Maybe it was due to the demography of the area she taught in?

Robinson really changed from one teaching style to the extreme other end of the spectrum. What I get from this article is that just like how different students require different methods of being taught to learn, some teachers are much better at teaching one way than another. Lecture style teaching has been used for a very long time in high schools and for many teachers I bet they saw success year in and year out. Does this mean they are better at teaching? Who knows!?

The problem with lecture style teaching is that there will always be some, the number of students varying each year, who cannot effectively learn through that method. Robinson's goal is to "leave no child behind." However, I think she's a bit excessive. I'm not sure exactly how many hours a week she teaches for but since it is semester I'm assuming about 5 or 6. Only 1 of those hours she states as using for lectures. Wow, that is an extremely small amount of time. I cannot even conceive of teaching like that since I have never experienced anything like it before. If I go to my practicum it would be awesome if my supervisor taught like that because I would love to see it in action and see how it is possible.

Some things I really liked about her school and teaching methods is the time reserved after school for homework and getting help and the peer tutoring that developed. That 45 minutes reserved for getting help from the teachers would definitely be really useful for many students. But at the same time, for the students that don't need help and have to wait around before club activities begin have it a bit rough. Kind of like punishing them for doing well. Peer tutoring is good. When I teach I would like to set up some form of peer tutoring outside of class under the supervision of teachers.

Time to bring this all to a close. Robinson has some great ideas but I think she's going a bit overboard. She has seen great improvement from changing teaching styles in just one year but is it because she was not a very effective lecturer, the demography of the city or the fact that this new teaching style really suits her and her sample of students? For a math class, less than 20% of the course being lecture format seems a bit small. Especially for grades 11 and 12 I have a hard time seeing all the material being covered by only lecturing for about 10 or 12 minutes a day.

I'll have to wait until I teach a class for the first time and find out for myself. What will work and what will fail miserably. Time will tell.