Sunday, April 20, 2008
Brown's Redemption
H. Douglas Brown really redeemed himself in my eyes with his last section of Chapter 10 in the book. He encouraged teachers to trust their instincts and believes that we know our students best. I had been thinking this all along. The theorists have their place, but after awhile, the research seems redundant. Just get on with the business of teaching. Granted, there is probably better approaches than others, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it! From this chapter I garnered that Krashen is a bit pompous. I can see why others would get so worked up about his hypothesis. However, he at least generates dialogue. Once again, most of the remarks are pretty obvious to any educator and would cross over boundaries into other areas of learning. I'm glad I read this chapter: it affirmed my own hypothesis that I was doing the best for my students in every way I knew how.
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2 comments:
Yeah. I had a theory of teaching that worked for me that i developed the hard way - by teaching in the field for more than a decade. Then I came back to school and applied all the things I learned. A lot of things didn't work - fine "in theory" but impracticable in the classroom.
Maybe different things work based on teacher personalities and strengths - and depending on the context of the students and classroom, but I've come back to where I started in terms of classroom management and pedagogy.
I do feel more confident in my decisions and more capable of defending my practices to administrators who - well intentioned but uninformed - have outdated or simplistic ideas of what we do. That can be a huge advantage. I can better support my intuitions and personal style by citing research and theory - and thereby hopefully better serve teh students I teach. I don't know if you've ever yet been pressured to teach or manage a classroom in a way that didn't agree with your intuitions, but it happens.
Yeah, I have been instructed to teach and manage a classroom against my beliefs and I left that position at the end of the school year.
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