Guide on the Side
I'm going away. School has hardly begun and I am leaving my students for nearly two weeks. I cannot adequately articulate the nerve-wracking anxiety this situation creates. I can see a benefit though. Besides for the actual trip, the choice to leave my students has helped to crystallize for me the role of the teacher. In my quest to move from "Sage on the Stage" to "Guide on the Side" I started to diminish the role of that guide in my own eyes. Sure, I belevied my classroom would be of greater use to my students if I was the guide on the side instead of dominating center-stage. Primarily because of a meme like this: Another similar idea was a graph I once saw about information retention. I'm making up the figures here, but the general gist was listening = 5% retention and the percentage of retention climbed as the activities became more and more hands on. So a strong part of my intellectual mind agreed with the advantage of student involveme