Learning to Unlearn

What do you have to unlearn and relearn about education, teaching, the classroom, or learning?

My English professor last semester always told us that we were going to have to "unlearn everything that we had already learned about writing." This is because many high school teachers did not teach us the correct way to write or did not focus on preparing students to do well in a college English class. In my experience, this is true. A student could write a terrible paper and still get a passing score on it. Most of my English periods in high school were spent as free days. If, as students, we did not feel that we were obtaining a proper education, why are we continuing to use the same old teaching methods that our teachers used?

This means that we have to unlearn everything about teaching methods that our teachers in high school taught us. I am not saying that all high school teachers are bad. It just seemed like the majority of them in my high school did not really care about teaching anyone anything. On the positive side, we know which of their methods worked for the students and which did not.

Here is a list of some of the things that I think that we as future teachers have to unlearn and relearn:

• The teacher does not have to be talking all of the time.
• The teacher should not be the only person working with technology.
• The teacher should not just be giving information all of the time; they should be learning also.
• Students do not all learn the same way.
• Technology can be useful in the classroom.

Interactive Whiteboards In Today's Classroom

Interactive whiteboards are almost completely worthless, yet they continue to be placed in today's classrooms. In all of my experiences with this piece of technology, the interactive whiteboard was used as nothing more than a regular whiteboard. Notes were projected onto the interactive whiteboard and the teacher explained what the notes meant. The only teacher I ever remember actually using the interactive whiteboard was my Spanish teacher. He put various pictures on the board and each student used the board to move the pictures around while telling a story in Spanish. My high school would have been much better off if they would have replaced our ancient math books or fixed the leaking roof instead of spending so much money on technology that was never used.
During the middle of my junior year, my trigonometry teacher had an interactive white board placed in her room. Being the old school teacher that she was, she absolutely refused to use it and even requested that the board be removed. When the school ignored her request and put the interactive board in the middle of the chalkboard that she used everyday, she wrote on the edges of the chalkboard and used the interactive whiteboard as a regular whiteboard with dry erase markers. I do not ever remember her even turning the interactive whiteboard on. Come to think of it, what is an interactive whiteboard doing in a high school math classroom anyway? I can not see a use for it other than it being used as a regular board. Placing an interactive whiteboard in a classroom with a teacher who is not interested in using one or willing to change their teaching methods to incorporate it into their lessons is a waste of money.
I am not the only person who believes that interactive whiteboards are a complete waste of money. Companies proclaim that if schools spend money on interactive whiteboards, academic success will increase. If this is the case, why aren't there interactive whiteboards in every college classroom? The Washington Press quotes, "'There is hardly any research that will show clearly that any of these machines will improve academic achievement,' said Larry Cuban, education professor emeritus at Stanford University." The Journal also says that "In spite of those desirable features and a potential rationale for purchases, the truth is that while the research on IWBs is growing in academic journals (Thomas, 2009), little of it has clearly linked any of those machines to improved academic achievement, as Larry Cuban pointed out (McCrummen, 2010)." An example of the ineffectiveness of interactive whiteboards was given in The Washington Press.
"Fairfax County public schools began installing interactive whiteboards several years ago, one of which landed in Sam Gee's classroom at W.T. Woodson High School. On a recent morning, the popular history teacher dimmed the lights, and his students stared at the glowing, $3,000 screen.
As he lectured, Gee hyperlinked to an NBC news clip, clicked to an animated Russian flag, a list of Russian leaders and a short film on the Mongol invasions. Here and there, he starred items on the board using his finger. 'Let's say this is Russia,' he said at one point, drawing a little red circle. 'Okay -- who invaded Russia?'
One student was fiddling with an iPhone. Another slept. A few answered the question, but the relationship between their alertness and the bright screen before them was hardly clear. And as the lesson carried on, this irony became evident: Although the device allowed Gee to show films and images with relative ease, the whiteboard was also reinforcing an age-old teaching method -- teacher speaks, students listen. Or, as 18-year-old Benjamin Marple put it: 'I feel they are as useful as a chalkboard.'"
Having an interactive whiteboard in his classroom did not make the students more interested, it just made things more expensive.
Interactive whiteboards are just about as effective as computers for differentiation. The teacher can design different computer-based projects for each ability, strength, or interest group and have students work on them using computers or the interactive whiteboard. The drawback with the interactive whiteboard is that only one student can work on it at a time. Schools usually have enough laptop or desktop computers for an entire class of students to work on at one time. Interactive whiteboards, however, are limited one or fewer to a classroom.
In conclusion, the benefits of having an interactive whiteboard in class do not outweigh the hefty cost. Teachers do not use them for their intended purpose. Also, for all of the students to benefit from the board, every student would have to use it. With overcrowded classroom, this is just not possible. Since the boards are so expensive, some teachers are also afraid to let their students use it. Instead of spending money on the boards, schools should use the extra money to hire more teachers so that the classes are smaller and students get more one-on-one time with their teacher.