10/17/08 Edutopia

I really enjoyed watching these two clips: The Edible School Yard and A Night in the Global Village. It seems that these are both great examples of progressive education, where students take a sense of responsibility for their education.

In The Edible School Yard the students get hands on learning by actively doing all the stages of farming food to eat. The students planted the crops, grew the crops, harvested the crops and prepared them to eat. While doing this the students learned math, science, history, communication skills, problem solving skills, and healthy eating skills to name a few.

In A Night in the Global Village students spent the night on a five acre property that had replications of living conditions in Guatemala, Thailand, and a refugee camp. The students were divided into "families" to live in the living conditions that people from these countries live in and each group had a part of what they needed to survive the night. The students had to try to communicate with each other and bargain for the resources they needed. Again the skills these students learned were many by "living the lesson".

I believe that by these students actively, hands on participating in these two different lessons they learned and experienced things that they will never forget. When a teacher makes these lessons so real to these students the students can not help to learn. What a great way to prepare kids for everyday life in the adult world.

I believe that even though I may not be able to do a lesson of this magnitude in the school system that I plan to be in, I can still implement creative ways to teaching lessons keeping in mind that students learn best by doing or hands on. I can incorporate hands on aspects of lessons to re-emphasize concepts the students need to learn.

I can also as a teacher show podcasts of this nature to my class and let them see how other students learn and give them options to do a similar project in my class, with of course the permission of the district and administration. Even if I am not able to do a project of this level, I can show my students that there are other methods out there than just the teach em', test em' method used in the schools in this area.