The Learning Machine

If you could create a schematic diagram of the learning process in your classroom, what might it entail? 

What pathways would learning take?

What would be deemed as most important?

What could immediately be transferred to waste? 

How much emphasis is placed upon assignments, quizzes and tests?

How important is the pathway that leads to a learner for life?

If you were to take the schematic above and adjust the lines to represent the importance of each path, how might you adjust the daigram? 

Which boxes would be larger for greater emphasis?

Which would be smaller for less importance? 

What processes are missing?

How might your students ideas on this differ? 

How might they be the same? 

If you were to look at your classroom, does it enhance this process or detract from the process?

As a teacher, what do you emanate?

What really matters to you in this work?

What difference can you make where you are, right there, right then?

Is what you do in your classroom moving the future of your students?

What stands in the way of making your students dreams come true?

What are you no longer willilng to accept?

Are you capable of transcending all of the obstacles that are in the way of your mission?

A teacher affects eternity:
he can never tell where his influence stops.

                                            ~ Henry Adams ~



Sweep Like Michaelangelo

After reading Rafe Esquith's book "Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Kids in a Mixed-up, Muddled-Up, Shook-up world",

I created a powerpoint using the quote from the Martin Luther King speech, "What is Your Life's Blueprint."

"If it falls your lot in life to sweep the streets: sweep them like Michaelangelo painted pictures, like Beethoven composed music and like Shakespeare wrote poetry."

I use this powerpoint throughout the semester to encourage students to maximize their effort in everything they do. Periodically I let students choose additional role models to add to the powerpoint.

Students have come up with examples like:  Theodore Gieselle, championed literacy, Jesse Owens, 'eraced' racism and Steve Prefontaine broke through the limits.

To learn more about Rafe Esquith access his website for the Hobart Shakespeareans. http://www.hobartshakespeareans.org/