The Importance of Play
Why playtime is important.
Posted March 27th, 2008 by MaryMorris11987I think that "playtime" is an essential part of the school day for students, mainly in elementary school. There are so many positive things that come out of playtime. First of all, elementary students cannot possibly sit in a classroom all day without a chance to release their energy. Playtime for this reason, helps children stay focused and not to ancy. It also gives them a chance to move around and stretch their legs. Another reason playtime is important is because children at the elementary level need to be active. There are so many problems with weight these days in young children, that without playtime, students would have little to no physical activity during the day. Playtime is also very important because it gives children the chance to interact with eachother.
read more »homework
Posted February 8th, 2008 by milkI belive that kids today have to much homework. i see it with my little brother who comes home from school with 3 hours of work each day. this is just too much in my opnion. i do think practice at home is a good thing but the amout seems to be growing faster and larger by the year. just ten years ago i could get my hw done in an hour and i was on top of my work. i just dont think more work necessarly means better results.
Friendly Teacher
Posted January 30th, 2008 by mef0707This is my first blog. I am a Sophomore at East Carolina University. I have always wondered how teachers are friends to their students, but at the same time the boss. I have had some awesome teachers in the past because they were so friendly. I was just wondering how teachers make their classroom fun and enjoyable while still being the role model in the classroom?
The Arts
Posted December 5th, 2007 by jackie styonsThe arts, music, history, social studies...pretty much everything that made grade school bearable is steadily being removed from the classrooms. I can't bear the idea of sitting through grammar and math and science with no culture or creativity thrown in there. Without the adventure of history and the beauty of music or the therapy of art or the richness of cultures from distant lands and ancient times, how can anyone think that drop out rates will drop? Instead they will skyrocket!
read more »More Movement in Schools
Posted November 26th, 2007 by sah0618Being my first blog, please forgive if it seems amateur! I am an afterschool teacher currently studying to be an elementary school teacher. It seems to me that if a school is overcrowded, like the one I am at, that there is less play and less interactive study than at a school with fewer students. This may be an obvious observation but none the less it needs attention. Students suffer in more ways than one when it comes to having larger class sizes. I feel like teachers don't think they can have "controlled" chaos in their classrooms if there are too many students. They feel the need to assign book work, where the children stay in their desks all day and rarely do interactive work, whether on the computer or in centers, or another form of "play" learning
read more »Life Lesson Teachers
Posted November 11th, 2007 by Shelley YoungWhen I signed up for classes this semester, my major was Theatre Education. To make a long story short, or possibly not so short, all Theatre Ed. majors have to take two directing classes (in order) before going into their Senior 1 and 2 semesters. To get in the first directing class, you must be approved, and a junior. After being approved, added into the class, and have analyzed approximately 7 plays (two weeks into school), the student must take an analysis test. And what does this analysis test DO you ask?
read more »We need to do less assessing and have more time doing...
Posted October 15th, 2007 by christine_hanbecause really, as a new teacher, I feel like there are so many more important things to learn from each exhausting, frantic school day than "oh good, my students can do some basic addition problems in less than 3 minutes". I'm a first-year teacher at a school that prides itself on being child-centered, community-oriented, and anti-standardized testing, among many other things. I was lucky enough to student teach at the sister school of the school I'm at now and experience the growing pains (or the blunt force-from-the-outside pains) of a school trying to maintain its vision and not succumbing the pressures of churning out high test scores while also trying not to get "in trouble".
read more »Play
Posted August 28th, 2007 by Peter HenryIn my book, Becoming Mr. Henry, (2005, Sterling House Publisher) I have an entire chapter called "Play." I'll give you three guesses what it's about....
So, to get the discussion of play rolling, I want to cite an excerpt:
read more »One long-term, pervasive change in attitude of young people which I observed as a teacher is the contemporary determination to be ‘rich’. This value continues to grow in popularity every year. Students stand in front of peers declaring that their main goal in life is to have “a lot of money”, the sooner the better.
The Importance of Play
Posted August 26th, 2007 by Peter HenryHa!
Look where we are right now at this historical moment. Standardized testing has been deemed so crucial, so vital, so revelatory, that we literally can't spend enough time preparing for them.
Today is August 26th, 2007.
I want to put that marker down because if there is anything that will eventually be proven to be a complete waste of instructional time, a devestatingly short-sighted goal for education, and a monumumental debilitation to children's natural curiosity and inspiration, it is the overly serious demands built up around standardized testing. It won't get us to excellence; it's turning kids off who would normally be excited about school; it's sapping the creativity of teachers. We're talking about starting standardized testing on 9-year-old kids!!
The facts are these: you don't learn deeply if you aren't inspired, engaged or in that zone that I want to compare favorably with "play." There is a natural friskiness, joy and exploration built into the human mind. You hear it all the time when things are working well at school. Look at the incredible explosion of interest in sports and co-curriculars of all kinds. Not to mention elder hostels, community education, outdoor pursuits of every kind, stripe and flavor. People love to play. It's what we live for. Why do kids start to scream after the last bell?
Kids have better access to this "joie de vivre", usually. But there is no doubt, if a sense of play is lost, stifled, or never encouraged at school, we lose something terribly important about being human. And, I submit, far from producing better learners, we end up dumbing learning down to its lowest common denominator. Let me speak it plain: play leads to better learning, and better learners, in multiple ways.
I just heard a wonderful program on NPR by Krista Tippett in the Speaking of Faith series. In this program, she interviews Dr. Stuart Brown, a physician and head of the National Institute for Play. No joke. (Yeah, I'd never have guessed that existed either.) Or, well, maybe I should make this into a joke.
Anyway, if you listen to that program, look carefully at the Institute's website, or even just hang around the thread here long enough to listen to what others have to say on this subject, I think you will be convinced, as I have always been, that a good teacher not only knows how to play--they know how to structure and create play for their students.
And on that topic, I will have a lot of very specific ideas and activities for all you new teachers. Again though, I want to see some numbers here. I got a lot going on, and if I am going to take an hour or two to pull this all together, I want there to be an audience. Not becase I am vain, but because I really do believe in open source sharing and I want this website to grow.
If you are interested in learning more, assemble a quick ten of your friends, colleagues or even family members, and I will spill my guts on how much fun you can make learning.... and why it all matters.
Time for me to get ready for some some fun! It's the first day of school tomorrow!
read more »How To Use NTN
The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future recently documented the extent of "teacher dropout" in the United States. It is not pretty, costing as much as 7.3 billion dollars a year. One of their solutions is to ensure that teachers, particularly new teachers, have an "external network" of professionals.
NTN hopes that through open-source collaboration, "new" teachers can become more connected, adept and well-informed around the various topics, issues and challenges facing them. NTN provides a site and utility, the open source crowd creates the content and connections.
read more »