A Different Kind of Teacher
Sometimes helping students succeed is more about the teacher than the topic.
Read Full Article
Sometimes helping students succeed is more about the teacher than the topic.
Read Full Article
A Different Kind of Teacher
- Thread starter Cari Scholtens
- Start date
It's interesting to me to read this, as a teacher myself. While we most likely work with different age groups (middle school, for me), I think it's the difference in subject matter that's the most interesting to me.
I teach band, which is ostensibly one of the "fun classes." Yet with the kids in my classes, love them though I do, I find more and more of them are unwilling and unable to accept the existence of more than one kind of Fun... and a lot of that has to do with their gaming habits, truth be told.
The younger students, especially in middle school when kids develop the age-typical-hyper-self-consciousness, they tend to back down from challenges for fear of embarrassment. But that's always been the case, and it always will be. That's just human nature. However, modern video games (unlike older video games, and the "lower tech" diversions kids once had to turn to) present a very skewed effort-to-success "exchange rate," and that has seriously cut down the amount of challenge they are willing (and perhaps able) to stomach.
In my class, which is supposed to be "all about fun" in minds of most, they discover the hidden truth: Making music is fun, but learning how to make that music is challenging. Often, it's frustrating. In a lot of ways, it's like a challenging video game -- the fun comes from the hard work, and through it we learn that hard work leads to a better kind of fun. But for many other students, the plethora of easy-victory games out there has promoted (I won't say "created") a culture in which struggling is a sign that something is "not fun."
So, while gaming (and, ugh, "gamification") is the current go-to for making the required, "drudgery" classes more appealing, I'm finding that the culture surrounding many gamers is working against the ability for a lot of kids, particulary in the late elementary-middle school range, to have what I call "serious" or "hard" fun. And then I watch as those kids move on to the high school and, most often, carry that same weakness with them.
Now, relating to high schoolers via after-school pastimes is something I also see in my day-to-day. Of course, my work with the high school students is entirely volunteer and outside of the school day, but I notice a marked difference with those students who are aware that I have a life outside of school. (Well... I notice a difference in their disposition toward me as a teacher, if not the subject matter itself.)
The gaming culture is emerging as our newest two-sided coin, as sports used to be (and continues to be). On one hand, it can, if used right, foster some pretty favorable character traits... but on the other hand, if used wrongly (or just not as rightly as it should) it can lead to some counter-productive habits and traits, too. Unfortunately, it seems to me that it more often does the latter than the former -- if you're not intentionally doing it right, you're at least accidentally doing it wrong.
(I also have to say that my years of experience in various settings has taught me that schools still need twice as many "bad cops" as they do "good cops" in the classroom. If every doctor was House, sure, we'd be a miserable institution... but the same would be true if all of us were Patch Adams. Treasure your time as Patch!)
I teach band, which is ostensibly one of the "fun classes." Yet with the kids in my classes, love them though I do, I find more and more of them are unwilling and unable to accept the existence of more than one kind of Fun... and a lot of that has to do with their gaming habits, truth be told.
The younger students, especially in middle school when kids develop the age-typical-hyper-self-consciousness, they tend to back down from challenges for fear of embarrassment. But that's always been the case, and it always will be. That's just human nature. However, modern video games (unlike older video games, and the "lower tech" diversions kids once had to turn to) present a very skewed effort-to-success "exchange rate," and that has seriously cut down the amount of challenge they are willing (and perhaps able) to stomach.
In my class, which is supposed to be "all about fun" in minds of most, they discover the hidden truth: Making music is fun, but learning how to make that music is challenging. Often, it's frustrating. In a lot of ways, it's like a challenging video game -- the fun comes from the hard work, and through it we learn that hard work leads to a better kind of fun. But for many other students, the plethora of easy-victory games out there has promoted (I won't say "created") a culture in which struggling is a sign that something is "not fun."
So, while gaming (and, ugh, "gamification") is the current go-to for making the required, "drudgery" classes more appealing, I'm finding that the culture surrounding many gamers is working against the ability for a lot of kids, particulary in the late elementary-middle school range, to have what I call "serious" or "hard" fun. And then I watch as those kids move on to the high school and, most often, carry that same weakness with them.
Now, relating to high schoolers via after-school pastimes is something I also see in my day-to-day. Of course, my work with the high school students is entirely volunteer and outside of the school day, but I notice a marked difference with those students who are aware that I have a life outside of school. (Well... I notice a difference in their disposition toward me as a teacher, if not the subject matter itself.)
The gaming culture is emerging as our newest two-sided coin, as sports used to be (and continues to be). On one hand, it can, if used right, foster some pretty favorable character traits... but on the other hand, if used wrongly (or just not as rightly as it should) it can lead to some counter-productive habits and traits, too. Unfortunately, it seems to me that it more often does the latter than the former -- if you're not intentionally doing it right, you're at least accidentally doing it wrong.
(I also have to say that my years of experience in various settings has taught me that schools still need twice as many "bad cops" as they do "good cops" in the classroom. If every doctor was House, sure, we'd be a miserable institution... but the same would be true if all of us were Patch Adams. Treasure your time as Patch!)
Cool, this sounds like what I'd like to do if I end up going the education route.
Would read again.
Would read again.
Teacher here as well. Language teacher (English and Swedish) for ages 12 through 19. Whenever I meet a new class I almost invariably get asked within 30 seconds what games I play just because I'm a younger male teacher with glasses. I've often talked about games and gaming with pupils and I've found that most of the time they want to pass on doing actual work and instead just have a fun conversation about games, because that's easy and obviously something they're interested in. I've only had a small percentage of gamer students make that bridge with me and for the ones who did, they were ambitious enough that we wouldn't need the gaming talk for them to succeed.
I'm skeptical. Like Dastardly says, gaming has taken over their other interests. I rarely get any boys at 16 that have read a book in the last year. They just play LoL, CoD or WoW. The problem, at least here in Sweden, is that they don't have enough of a work ethic instilled in them and whenever you demand work from them, they just act all jaded because their parents always let them get away with it. Generally, that is. Everything has to be easy.
Captcha was fitting... "check your work"
I'm skeptical. Like Dastardly says, gaming has taken over their other interests. I rarely get any boys at 16 that have read a book in the last year. They just play LoL, CoD or WoW. The problem, at least here in Sweden, is that they don't have enough of a work ethic instilled in them and whenever you demand work from them, they just act all jaded because their parents always let them get away with it. Generally, that is. Everything has to be easy.
Captcha was fitting... "check your work"
This is excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed the article, and it helps to shine a positive light on the thorny subject of videogames and their impact on children. It's nice to have positive cases, such as this one, where we can prove videogames can help improve student-teacher relationships and facilitate a good learning environment.
I loved this article, and as a new professor, I can say that finding a way to relate to the students has been the best way for me personally to engage them.
I've been told I should teach on multiple occasions but multiple people, but to be 100%, I've only considered it very flippantly. This article reinforced my belief that if I ever became a teacher, this is why I would be good teacher. Kudos to you for taking something you love and making it work not only in your day-to-day but in the classroom as well. It takes an awesome person to pull it off.
When I was in highschool one of my favorite teachers played videogames and I cared much more about his class because of the fact that when we saw each other outside of class we would stop for a moment to discuss whatever we were playing at the time. He also made a sort of tradition of giving out his Xbox Live gamertag to graduating kids who he felt had both had a good relationship with him and worked hard in his classes. I was extremely proud when he gave it to me partially because it meant that he thought i had worked hard enough in his class that i deserved it.
I had a social studies teacher in high school who had a similar penchant for engaging the kids and stirring discussion. He often showed episodes of The Simpsons to illustrate his points, occaisionally came to class in authentic military attire indicative of the era we were learning about (equipment included, even guns... how he got permission, I have no idea), and introduced us to a lot of classic movies (Tora Tora Tora, Ran, Dr. Strangelove, etc... and one time we watched a huge chunk of Pearl Harbor just to make fun of it). I remember one Christmas break he lent me Neville Shute's On The Beach to read, for no reason pertaining to the class, just because he thought I'd like it. I did. So I definitely think you're right about relating going a long way.
" For many of them, it's the first time they have been genuinely curious about academic subject matter, and feeding that hunger even once creates an addiction."
This. This is why I kept up with Latin at secondary school even when it was hard - my teacher kept the classes so vibrant and interesting that I didn't want to miss out on them by dropping his class. Before I knew it I was applying to do a Classics degree at university, and this September I'll be beginning a PhD in Latin literature.
What really sticks when you teach is when you try to be interesting and teach in such a way that students want to learn. Who knows? They may even learn something that'll help them out later in life.
This. This is why I kept up with Latin at secondary school even when it was hard - my teacher kept the classes so vibrant and interesting that I didn't want to miss out on them by dropping his class. Before I knew it I was applying to do a Classics degree at university, and this September I'll be beginning a PhD in Latin literature.
What really sticks when you teach is when you try to be interesting and teach in such a way that students want to learn. Who knows? They may even learn something that'll help them out later in life.
Interestingly, this article comes a few days after I had a similar experience myself, though I cannot boast quite the same degree of success as the author. I am an English teacher in Taiwan. My students are a bit younger (3rd-5th grade). I can't exactly compare L.A. Noire to Shakespeare with them, but I did talk about Minecraft. Two boys brought it up and whenever they have free-writing time they write about adventures in Minecraft, and what they want to build next. We don't spend much time discussing it, but I think it's made a difference that I even know what it is. During a parent-teacher conference last week, one of these boys' mothers thanked me because her son says he likes English class now, which apparently he hasn't said before. Puts a smile on my face.
Great article and quite relevant as I am in my final year of a Bachelor of Education (Primary).
If/when I get a full-time teaching job (hopefully next year), I intend on using video games as a means to teach in my classroom. I will start with Minecraft because there are already teachers out there who created a perfect mod (MinecraftEdu) and I can see a lot of educational potential in a game like Minecraft.
After that I have ideas of bringing in point-and-click adventure games, puzzle games and story-driven games such as the Myst games (I am hoping they won't be too complex for students).
Does anyone have any other suggestions for video-games that have educational potential?
Please try to avoid anything M-Rated or higher as I will be teaching students no older than 12. That means no violence, swearing or sexually explicit content. I think RPGs would be great for teaching Maths but I can't think of any appropriate for students under 15.
If/when I get a full-time teaching job (hopefully next year), I intend on using video games as a means to teach in my classroom. I will start with Minecraft because there are already teachers out there who created a perfect mod (MinecraftEdu) and I can see a lot of educational potential in a game like Minecraft.
After that I have ideas of bringing in point-and-click adventure games, puzzle games and story-driven games such as the Myst games (I am hoping they won't be too complex for students).
Does anyone have any other suggestions for video-games that have educational potential?
Please try to avoid anything M-Rated or higher as I will be teaching students no older than 12. That means no violence, swearing or sexually explicit content. I think RPGs would be great for teaching Maths but I can't think of any appropriate for students under 15.
Very few video games, including Minecraft, have real educational potential. They can make an okay attention-grabbing gimmick, and they can make for decent sidebar in the classroom discussions. Outside that? If you want kids to learn Math, they'll have to grapple with math directly. Here's the bad news:pearcinator said:
1. Gimmicks have a shelf life. I think all of us, as teachers, have decided at one point that we've found the "Holy Grail" of reaching kids, especially early on in our careers. Eventually, we'll find that what we've really discovered is that novelty breeds interest. If you're a new, younger teacher talking about stuff the kids are into, you'll have their attention... for awhile. Novelty wears off.
Now, a lot of teachers never truly have to wrestle with the problems this can cause, because they see each kid for one year -- maybe two, at the high school level. As a band director, I have the rare opportunity to work with students for as many as eight years, so I can see the long-term effects gimmicky teaching can have. Be very mindful on how much you rely on them, because they can cause damage long term and make the next teacher's job even harder.
2. You can only take so much meat out of the steak before all that's left is fat. Using in-game physics to demonstrate and introduce parabolic flight paths can be a cute way to initially engage quadratics... but at some point, the kids are just going to have to do some real pencil-active problem solving. The problem is, if they're addicted to the fat, the steak leaves an increasingly bad taste in their mouths.
3. This is the biggest problem with the current obsession with "making learning fun." Yes, learning is easier when it's fun. Yes, happy kids are easier to teach. But too often we're doing things in a way that teaches kids it's always the world's responsibility to make things fun for them. This leads to two conclusions: 1) I don't have to do anything I don't immediately enjoy, and 2) It's your fault if I don't enjoy it.
Video games can be, used sparingly, a marginally-effective bridge for "meeting kids where they are." But unless we do something to move them, we'll be guilty of "leaving kids as they were." Never forget that we're in the business of changing kids, not making them comfortable.
Best of luck on that front. Educational games are like the City of Gold -- long sought, never truly found. Every kid is able to perceive a fine line within the game, and on one side it's too "gamey," while on the other it's too "educationy" (See: Number Munchers, etc.) Your kids that genuinely enjoy "too educationy" games? Those are the kids that just may have enjoyed learning the content for its own sake... but sometimes overuse of the games can pull them away from that.The Lugz said:
I remember seeing a study made in the US about good teachers. They collected data on some of the better-rated teachers in schools all over the country, and noted the methods they used (among other data). One interesting conclusion was that the specific teaching method didn't correlate with how "good" the teacher was. The top-rated ones used many diverse teaching methods and not a single one was universally favored by good teachers. (Unfortunately I don't remember the title or any way to reference the paper).Dastardly said:
This corroborates the idea that using gimmicks or other kinds of "fun" methods is not necessarily the way to go. Maybe the key is in the charisma of the teacher and his/her ability to relate to the students, at least for children. People like to think there's an "easy" way to teach, a silver bullet, but it doesn't seem to exist. Paraphrasing Barbie, Teaching is hard, let's go shopping!
Thanks for the love, Everyone! This is Cari Scholtens, but my account name is jedi88. I think the Escapist created a new account for me or something. I appreciate all the feedback and am so glad for those of you who got the point of the article. Teaching isn't about being an end all beat all expert of your subject as much as it is being able to relate to kids. This article wasn't about my teaching kids about videogames. It's about using videogames as a Trojan Horse to hopefully sneak some little math gremlins into my kids' heads. For our discussions, they don't hate math. Frankly, kids hate math so when students tell me that my class is their favorite often my response is "Really?" with a raised eyebrow. I don't think it's the math as much as the relationships and the comfort they find in my room. I love my students and I love my job! Thank you all for the support and reminding me that maybe "different" is an awesome way to be!
Godspeed, you magnificent teacher, you. Please don't burn out - good middle school teachers are a gift rarely given to humanity. Many thanks to all the teachers who have posted their thoughts here, and thanks for the job you do.
I love games as a pasttime but Scholten's use of them to foster dialogue with her students is probably the most pragmatic use in a school setting. They are, relative to teachers delivering knowledge, a terribly inflexible medium. Ratings aside, the medium has all the rigidity-related flaws of standardized testing and none of the focus on pedagogy - the point of games is to entertain. If you were planning on teaching english, arguably you could get kids to learn story structure from some games. History, maaaaybe from some of the more rigorously researched RTS games. But math, which is indubitably at the core of all games, is not something I'd recommend videogames for as the mechanics of the math are hidden.
It's just my opinion but you might have more luck introducing kids to game design. Let them apply math to rules they make up and prototype their work in paper and cardboard. It is fast, cheap and tactile. It can be done as group work or individual assignments. It can be a one-off project or something that's ongoing and made of many steps. It has tons of cross-discipline potential.
I hope you'll pardon my unsolicited comments and wish you every success as a teacher.
Pearcinator, I humbly submit the point of Scholtens' article was not using video games as a means to teach, but as a means to engage with her students. THIS IS AWESOME. She makes a point of saying the methods by which she teaches are the same as her colleagues. Generally speaking first year teachers have enough on their plate with lesson planning / classroom management / assessment without also trying to re-invent the wheel. If teaching is your career, you're in for the long haul. I recommend piloting any ideas you have for games as instruction in an extra-curricular activity before taking it into your classroom (where your principal, among others, may need to be convinced of its validity).pearcinator said:
I love games as a pasttime but Scholten's use of them to foster dialogue with her students is probably the most pragmatic use in a school setting. They are, relative to teachers delivering knowledge, a terribly inflexible medium. Ratings aside, the medium has all the rigidity-related flaws of standardized testing and none of the focus on pedagogy - the point of games is to entertain. If you were planning on teaching english, arguably you could get kids to learn story structure from some games. History, maaaaybe from some of the more rigorously researched RTS games. But math, which is indubitably at the core of all games, is not something I'd recommend videogames for as the mechanics of the math are hidden.
It's just my opinion but you might have more luck introducing kids to game design. Let them apply math to rules they make up and prototype their work in paper and cardboard. It is fast, cheap and tactile. It can be done as group work or individual assignments. It can be a one-off project or something that's ongoing and made of many steps. It has tons of cross-discipline potential.
I hope you'll pardon my unsolicited comments and wish you every success as a teacher.