Roche A. Samy
In City Schools, like New Haven, the percentage of Drop-outs in High Schools and Middle Schools are high. One of the many factors that can be attributed to this cause is that the city youths are not “turned on” by traditional academic approach to education by normal, conventional methods of teaching. Most adolescents have their own values and standards with little or negative guidance from parents or guardians, particularly those coming from one parent families. In spite of growing prosperity within a complex society, the postindustrial society demands to prolong the years of formal and generally high standard education.
The psychological transformations of adolescents are also affected by the ever-expanding complexity of adult responsibilities (in the home, at work and in the community). Hence, psychologists view that an expanding period is needed to develop the appropriate skills, attitudes and perspectives necessary to become an adult.
Maths and Sciences are dreaded by most students. In order to make these subjects interesting, I have created situations for
Inquiry
and
Enquiry
. Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, of motivational techniques, my “HO HUM CRASHER” can better be described by the following analogy.
You cannot learn to swim without getting wet. This undisputed fact holds true for scientific, creative, critical and investigative thinking, the process of inquiry. In order to insure that the student gets wet in the liquid of intellectual inquiry, the teacher must lure and lead the students into the swimming pool. The teacher must make sure that the students must do more than just dangle their feet or wiggle their toes in the waters. The teacher may playfully, sneak behind the students, push them in or dive in first and call them to join him/her, pointing out that it is really isn’t so bad. Unfortunately, it is not that easy to get students involve themselves in an intellectual process that is new to them, and once the student gets over the cold, chilling shock of initial plunge, he starts to like it. Thus the student
can
be made to
think.
The lesson plans are devised by using two domains: COGNITIVE and AFFECTIVE, using the taxonomy of Krathowl and Bloom, (1964). In the Cognitive domain, there is analysis synthesis and evaluation. In the affective domain, there is conceptualization, organization and characterization. Thus in my HO HUM Crasher, (motivational) technique, dogmatic statements are avoided. The teacher must show and tell by way of experiments and demonstrations so that students can see, touch, do a project so that they can remember facts associated with it, for a long time.
Lesson Plans & Classroom Activities:
These plans are developed with “show and tell” activities, experiments, demonstrations or projects. The fields covered to teach are physical sciences, life sciences and earth sciences and chemistry. The topic outline will include: 1) Objective or Problem, 2) Invitation-Capsule Lesson or Technique to get started in class, 3). Stimulation, simulation, experiment, demonstration capsule lesson, 4). Evaluation vocabulary, questions, crossword puzzles, 5). appendices, diagrams & illustrations and 6 )bibliography & references.
Teachers’ Philosophy:
When a teacher’s aspirations for himself and his pupils remain dynamic and open-minded, new aims and hopes emerge, and older ones deepen and mature. The really alive teacher continually confronts the challenge of reformulating and enriching his educational objectives. This may be one of the reasons why many of us find teaching so exciting and rewarding. As a concerned teacher, I would have at least achieved my annual goal if I have shaped the student to be his own teacher to survive in this problem filled world. I would also expect and hope that my pupils will know, do and value many things in June that they didn’t (and perhaps couldn’t) know, do or value in September. I hope my other fellow teachers would agree with me in this hopeful expectation.
