Deeper Reading: Chapter the Third

"How a person feels about a learning situation determines the amount of attention devoted to it."

I think Sousa's second point (p.29) is especially salient. Gallagher mentions how students often wonder about the relevance of their classroom learning. Unfortunately, the idea of relevance is tricky. We sometimes teach concepts that have little real-world relevance to either the teacher or the student. Such is the reality of teaching to standards created by out of touch administrators and politicians. In some cases, the question isn't only "How do I motivate the student?" but "How do I motivate the teacher?"

The example of using potato chips to introduce a science unit on Olestra is a laudable motivational tactic. Honestly, though, we all don't have the extra money to buy such supplies for all 90 of our students on a daily basis. I know that this isn't Gallagher's point, but still...

Sousa claimed that our brains have "a persistent interest in novelty." I know well the brain's need for novelty. I remember, upon seeing Dead Poets Society in a grad class, noting Mr. Keating's use of novelty for cementing concepts in his students' brains. For example, in one scene, he asks the students to huddle up and whispers a point to them. In another scene, he brings his entire class to the courtyard. As Mr. Keating said:

"Robert Frost said, Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Now, I want you to find your own walk right now. Your own way of striding, pacing. Any direction. Anything you want. Whether it’s proud, whether it’s silly, anything. Gentlemen, the courtyard is yours."

What a great way of cementing a concept in the student's brain. Good movie. Personal favorite.

Gallagher's Romeo and Juliet reading guide seems useful. It's another one of his resources that I will blatantly steal. Perhaps, after stealing his specific activities and worksheets, I'll feel comfortable enough with the techniques to adapt them to my lessons. That's probably the whole point of this book.

Reading about classrooms in books like this one always gets me excited to teach. I feel energized whenever I hear about the potential for an idealized classroom. My classes rarely work out in the idealized fashion, though, and I doubt Gallagher's do, either. I guess we should take his examples with a grain of salt. After all, this guy claims to have been teaching fifteen years, and he's just referring to the very best of his anecdotal evidence.

I feel overwhelmed with all of the ideas presented in this chapter. They're all good, and I want to try them, but there's almost too many to realistically attempt in one semester. I think the real wisdom to be learned from this chapter is a teacher willingness to spend time "boiling the water" for student learning. Is there someone who can type these activities into a Word document and post it on the staff drive, for future reference? Or scan in the pages?

Is there enough time for all these activities in the class and to do the reading? Maybe Gallagher does these activities in class and assigns the actual reading as homework. Will that work for us? My students usually don't do homework. Maybe, if I do these activities in class and motivate them properly, they'll be intrigued enough to do the reading at home.

His closing comments (p.49) mention the challenges of assuming too much. I was given the following advice by the proprietor of a comic book store, after I was awarded an artistic grant to teach local children how to write and draw comic books. "Don't assume that they know anything," he said. I keep that advice in the back of my mind everyday, as I'm consistently shocked at the knowledge and skills deficiencies in some of our students.