A Learners’ View (ALV) Is Of Choices on The Shortest And Fastest Path To Learning, The Oxygen Of Social life.

When learning is to be, Teachers use ALV.

Main Page: Classic Education: A Learners’ View (ALV) of Choices during Teaching and Learning

Theme: Choose to teach as learners learn.

THE OBVIOUS FACT IS, teaching, like learning, takes time and effort.

Ms. Brookes* is an urban public school teacher and professional development consultant. School districts pay her a fee to speak to their teachers. Her students routinely score in the low average range on annual state academic proficiency tests. She explains that those scores reflect different family and neighborhood values from hers and her teaching. She goes on to say, “Life gets in the way of planning lessons,” she told an audience of teachers at a required professional development session, “so I plan them in my head during my 15 minute drive to school each morning. I correct papers and complete other school chores before leaving campus. I leave school as quickly as I can after I dismiss my class, so I can pick up my children at their schools. The rest of my day is family time.”

Picture yourself in this teacher’s shoes. Do you also choose to plan lessons while driving to school and to leave school work at school? After all, your district paid for her to talk to teachers at your school. They must have confidence in her advice.

But, wait a minute. Do you want her as the teacher of your children, especially for the one child who daydreams and has trouble with math? Would you then be satisfied with the way Ms. Brookes teaches her class? What if he has a teacher next year who expects higher than low average academic performance skills to start the school year? What if the next teacher doesn’t go along with the theory that daydreaming is a developmental condition that the boy must outgrow? What if you want him to be informed at the highest levels he can attain, especially to excel with his love of astronomy and robotics, as well as to fulfill his dreams, as is his sister, of becoming an astronaut?

Let’s load up this situation with a bit more of what you consider realistic ambition for both of your children. You’ve heard the job and career market forecasts for your children. If all the teachers are like Ms. Brookes, will they be competitive for employment with graduates from schools, states, and countries that rank higher on academic performance tests than her students? After all, there are only so many jobs and these change locations and required skills more rapidly than when we were born.

Now, you, we, have a predicament teachers face every day. Where does self-interest end and communal interest begin? We can even make this choice more difficult by noting that teachers sign a contract to fulfill certain expectations of their board of education in exchange for a salary and benefits. Would Ms. Brookes’ board be satisfied, if she used a legitimate (not sneaky or unethical) way for her students to earn higher academic performance scores on state standardized tests?

A learners’ view (ALV) offers a resolve to this predicament for educators. Teach the way learners learn from your lessons. Match instruction and lessons with choices learners will likely make to learn these lessons. This resolve offers use of common aspects of experimental behavioral and social science research reports and using them to design, instruct, and assess results of lessons in or out of schools.

Teach Like Learners Learn 1.0

When learning is to be, Teachers use ALV.

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