Blog Post #9.5 Oakes (Quotes)

In "Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route" by Jeannie Oakes, several quotes stuck out to me. The first had to do with ineffective teaching and learning strategies. "Learning tasks consisted most often of memorizing and repeating answers back to the teacher." This stuck out to me because I have always felt that the majority of high school for me was exactly this: blindly repeating definitions we have memorized the night before in order to pass a quiz or test. I remember a teacher saying once that this strategy was ineffective because if you were to ask that student a few weeks later those same words they could not do it.

"Unless teachers and administrators believe and expect all students to learn well, they will be in likely to create school and classroom conditions where students believe in their own ability and exert the effort it takes to succeed." Many people forget that school is not only the effort of the student as well as the effort of the teacher. Most people assume that if a student is failing a class that it is the student's fault, while it could just as likely be the teacher's inability to reach or teach the student. Teachers need to come in with a positive mindset as well as the students in order for everyone to achieve.

"... there is considerable evidence that even the very best students make stronger intellectual gains while working with students of varying skill levels than when they work alone." While the majority of the article spoke of group projects and students working together, this quote wrapped up the entire notion pretty well. If the mind of a student is engaged on several levels: interacting with one another, problem solving, and abstract thinking just as a few examples, their mind grows much more in these group projects than learning by themselves.

This article from Starting Point shows some pointers on assigning group work and different roles students can use to complete a certain project.

Jeannie Oakes: