Do you remember being a 5th-grader and savoring those last few weeks of summer before you start back to school? You treasure every day, skating in the street with your friends, swimming at the community pool and staying up to the last minute of your summer bedtime curfew. Then, all the sudden, summer is over and the first week of school comes with a barrage of emotions: excitement to catch up with old friends, nerves about being in a new school or with a new teacher, happiness over being in class with an attractive girl or popular boy, worried about getting stuck with the hardest teacher, and eagerness to start learning! (Okay...maybe only a few students experience that last one, I loved learning and still do!) Unfortunately the high from the first day of school doesn’t last long. As a teacher begins a new year with a fresh set of students, they will often prompt an entry exam. Not for a grade, but to gain an understanding of the student’s knowledge in each subject...and to observe how much material was completely erased over the summer holiday! Soon students are reviewing the syllabus and dreading the work ahead: homework, projects, presentations, and cumulative exams. In most cases, the first month or so is spent laboriously reviewing all of the lessons that the summer magically erased from kid’s brains. Ironically, students complain, “But we already learned this last year!” or “Why are we doing this again?” Yet they don’t actually remember the information. Traditional schools function in this manner: test for basic knowledge, review previously learned material, teach new information. Rinse and repeat. How would you feel if your career followed this pattern? What if every Monday your team got together to review the professional codes of conduct? At first, you’d learn new things and be engaged, but I’m assuming that six weeks later you’d be bored out of your mind and wouldn't even hear the codes of conduct being discussed...you'd all be participating in a rote and memorized manner, not really even knowing what you are learning and saying. We wonder what happens after the first few weeks of school... |
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