There's More to Education than Copying!

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FINALLY!!!

For the first time all year, I heard students complain about how all they do is copy! All the volunteers know that’s what they do in all their classes (even music!), and we complain about it because our students have no clue how to think, but I have definitely never heard a kid here, in the elementary or high school, complain about it, until today.

I kind of feel bad about it though because of how it happened but…

I teach half of the 7th grade girls (~12-15 years old) for computers. The other half always asks me for help with their homework, and I can never help them and they never understand why. The reason is because they’re being taught all this theory or something about the computer, of which I have no clue. I just know how to use a computer, and that’s what I teach my girls. My computer classes have been using Microsoft Word from Day 1 (2 months ago), and the other class hasn’t even opened Word yet. I always ask to look at the other girls’ notebooks, and it is filled with notes dictated by the teacher. All they’ve been doing all year is copying (useless) notes and typing, whereas my class can create documents and do projects with stuff they’ve written, like putting in pictures and all that.

This afternoon, it was towards the end of my class and 2 girls from the other class (who had computers in the morning) walked in. All my girls had either taken an exam with me and so were playing cards or something on the computer, or they were finishing up a project, and we were listening to music and wrapping up, so it wasn’t a big deal that the other girls came in. But then they saw what my girls were working on, and they were so jealous. Their friends showed them what they have been doing with me, and you could see by the look on their faces that things were turning in their heads and they were realizing that there was a huge difference between my class and the Ecuadorian teacher’s class. One of the girls made a comment about how all they do is copy. They both asked me to switch into my class.

I feel bad for the girls because I know their class is boring, but I also feel bad for the Ecuadorian teacher because she’s running a class how she was taught, and I’m sure she doesn’t know any different. That’s how it is in all the regular classes here - the kids copy, copy, copy, and the teachers dictate, dicate, dictate. I substitute taught for a 4th grade class for an hour and a half, and the assignment I was given to do with them was to dictate a short story to them, which they had to write in their notebooks, and then they had to copy the picture exactly that was in my copy of the book. I don’t have any real training to be a teacher, but I grew up in a school system that for sure taught me how to think.

Overall, it was amazing to see girls realize that there’s more out there in education than just copying.

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