3 rules to spark learning

7/28/2019 3 Rules to Spark Learning

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3 rules to spark learning - Ramsey Musallam

I teach Chemistry. More than just explosions, Chemistry is[1]___________. Have you ever found yourself at a restaurant spacing out just thisdoing this over and over? Some people nodding yes. Recently I showed this to mystudents and I just ask them to try and explain why it [2] _____________. Thequestions and conversations that followed were fascinating. And check out this videothat Maddie from my period three class sent me that evening.

Obviously as Maddies Chemistry Teacher, I loved that she went home toget a kick out at this kind of ridiculous demonstration that we did in class. But what[3] _____________ me more is that Maddies curiosity took her to a new level. If youlook inside that beaker, you might see a [4] _________. Maddie's using temperatureto extend this phenomena to a new scenario. Questions and curiosity like Maddie'sare magnets that draw us towards our teachers and they transcend all technology orbuzz words in education. But if we place these technologies before student inquiry,we can be robbing ourselves of our greatest [5] ________ as teachers: our studentsquestions.

For example, ipping a boring lecture from the classroom to the [6]___________ of a mobile device my save instructional time but if it is the focus of

our students experience it's the same dehumanizing chatter just wrapped up in fancyclothing. But if instead, we have the guts to [7] ___________ our students, perplexthem and evoke real questions. Through those questions we as teachers haveinformation that we can use to tailor, robust and informed methods of blendedinstruction. Twenty-rst century lingo jargon mumbo jumbo aside.

The truth is Ive been teaching for [8] ____________years now and it took alife threatening situation to snap me out of ten years of pseudo teaching and helpedme realize that student questions are the [9] __________ of real learning. Not some

scripted curriculum the given ten bits of random information.In May, of twenty ten, thirty ve years old with a two-year-old at home and

my second child on the way, I was diagnosed with the large aneurysm at the base of my aort. This lead to open-heart surgery. This is actually real e-mail from my doctorright there. Now when I got this, I was (press caps lock) absolutely freaked out. But Ifound surprising moments of comfort in the condence that my surgeon embodied:Where did this guy get this condence, the audacity of it? So when I asked him, hetold me [10] ________ things.

He said rst his curiosity drove him to ask hard questions about theprocedure, about what worked and what didn't work.

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Second, he embraced and didn't fear the messy process of trial and error,the inevitable process of trial and error. And third, through intense reection hegathered the information that he needed to design and [11] ____________ theprocedure and then with the steady hand, he saved my life.

Now I absorbed a lot from these words of wisdom and before I went backinto the class that fall, I wrote down three rules of my own that I bring to my lessonplanning still today.

Rule number one: [12] _____________ comes rst. Questions can bewindows to great instruction but not the other way around.

Rule number two: Embrace the mess. We are all teachers, we knowlearning is [13] __________. And just because the scientic method is allocated topage ve of section one point two, of chapter one, of the one that we all skip. Trialand error can still be an informal part of what we do every single day at Sacred HeartCathedral at room two oh six.

And Rule number three: Practice reection. What we do is important itdeserves our care but it also deserves our revision. Can we be the surgeons of ourclassrooms as if what we are doing one day will save lives?

And our students are worth it. And each case is different. Chemistryteacher. Needed to get that out of my system before we move on.

So these are my [14] _____________ on the right we have little Analu andon the left Raylie.

Raylie is going to be a big girl in a couple weeks here. Shes gonna be fouryears old and anyone who knows a four-year-old knows that they love to ask [15]____________. Yeah, why. I could teach this kid anything because she curious abouteverything. We all were at that age. But the challenge is really for Raylie's futureteachers the ones she is yet to meet. How will they [16] __________ this curiosity?

You see, I would argue that Raylie is a metaphor for all kids. I think dropping out of school comes in many different forms. To the senior who's checked out before theyear's even begun or that empty desk in the back of an urban middle schoolsclassroom.

But if we as educators, leave [17] ____________the simple role asdisseminators of content and embrace a new paradigm as cultivators of curiosity andinquiry. We just might bring a little bit more [18] _____________ to their school dayand spark the imagination!

Thank you very much!



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3 rules to spark learning

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