Throughout my life as a musician, I have heard that a music teacher's ultimate goal should be to become obsolete. To become unnecessary. To become more of a bother than a help.
Doesn't that sound like a great goal? "I want to become irrelevant to the students I care about and invest my life in."
How is this possible? And why would anyone want that? Let me put it another way: How can an educator train students to be able to develop their own learning, to set their own goals, to identify their own areas of growth, to look for their own solutions? To help a student be so self-aware and have all the information necessary (or the know-how to access that information) that the teacher has little to add to their learning?
I wonder how many teachers feel that they achieve this. Likely not many, although I suspect that a few more music teachers feel they've reached this, because they typically teach their students for several years. But still, it seems like a lofty goal.
One of the standards for the International Society for Technology in Education is that students should become Empowered Learners. In order for a student to achieve this, the teacher has to direct their learning as the students learn how to learn.
Do students know how to set goals? Do they know how they learn best? Do they know the resources they have available? And do they know how to problem-solve?
A big part of this is understanding what role technology can play in their education. For example, in a music classroom students can use tuners and metronomes to instantly gauge their accuracy in pitch or time. They can record themselves to get a third-person perspective on what they really sound like. They can listen to recordings of great musicians to be inspired by those who have achieved what they hope to achieve someday. They can also search online for resources that others have already created.
But do our students know how to use this technology?
Do they know how to direct their own learning?
In the lives of your students, do you hope, someday, to become obsolete?
I thought of what Keith said when I read this. When he told the story of the phone call he got from that mom, who said that he influenced her daughter and that he will know in Heaven when her and 1000 others are lined up behind her. I think the "school" part of teaching and learning, technology and pencils and paper, teachers and students, needs to become obsolete. We should want the kids coming to class not dreading another day of school and not angry because they have to write another essay. As you said, we want our students to direct their own learning. We want them to take an interest in learning and not think of it as "learning."
ReplyDelete