Tuesday
25Nov
Creators of New Ideas
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 at 08:24AM 
If teaching is reduced to mere data transmission, if there is no sharing of excitement and wonder, if teachers themselves are passive recipients of information and not creators of new ideas, what hope is there for their students? — Paul Lockhart
in inspiring
inspiring
Reader Comments (10)
amy, i think all you need to do is try to help him find his own answers as much as possible rather than just answering them straight out ... you have a kid made for inquiry-based learning! :^)
theresa, lol, the pressure is on! we are, after all, our children’s first, best model of how to interact with the world. whatever we want for them, don’t we need to want those things for ourselves as well? and how better to teach than by example? if we say but don’t do .. what will they follow?
there is an interesting article in the new national geographic traveler about complex systems and “system accidents”, a term coined by sociologist charles perrow. it talks about self-organizing systems and how a lot of people in a large system, each doing their smallish, fairly simple bit, can come together to make a system that can go terribly wrong. the article talks about a climbing incident that led to multiple deaths and also our economy. i, of course, thought of all the different people who come together to make our huge educational system.
my colleagues and i used to sit around and discuss how best to change the system -- inspire the parents? convince the administrators? get the educational programs to change their curricula? inspire and support the teachers? unfortunately, i don’t think changing any •one• of these things makes a difference, if the other parts are working against you.
thank you so much for your comment -- i really appreciate it.
Sorry I disappeared on our DMing on twitter yesterday. I shoot you an email soon so we can catch up. miss talking to you!
xo.
ali, yes, exactly. if a teacher feels they have nothing left to learn, what message does that send? and it’s not just the children who teach us; we can teach ourselves, just as we want them to learn to teach themselves. everyone says they want to raise “life-long learners” .. the easiest way to do that has to got to be *being* a life-long learner yourself. *really* still learning, in a way that is obvious to your children.