Comments on: How Students Learn

By: Pat Fowler

Pat Fowler — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:57:30 +0000

Facts are handy to have and essential for assessing models. In fact starting with some memorized facts can facilitate building a productive creative space.

By: Barbara McKay

Barbara McKay — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:03:57 +0000

As an English teacher, I highlight themes of central interest to young adults. This generates questions and keeps discussion lively, and develops an experience they find personally meaningful. At the same time, I have another legitimate goal: to pass on to a new generation the best traditions in the humanities. An effective teacher meets the young freshly while conveying the timeless vitality of universal human questions, enticing students to join a living chain linking past to present and future. Adult guidance should always have a place; it is up to us to exercise wisdom in avoiding the extremes of being overly student-centered or fixated on material.

By: Shannan Schuster

Shannan Schuster — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:51:36 +0000

As a K-12 educator this article is very exciting to read. We have always known that students do not retain facts and figures taught in school yet we have continued to teach this way for nearly 200 years.
In order to be competitive in a global economy students will need to have skills not facts. Bravo to Middlebury for confronting and changing an outdated educational system.

One question? If this is what Middlebury believes then do they still advocate for the AP program which traditionally covers material vs. covering skills. I imagine that many of their applicants and accepted students have spent their high school years memorizing facts.

By: Antonio Manganiello, '74

Antonio Manganiello, '74 — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:27:44 +0000

It is fascinating to read this article.As a retired language teacher, I have been alarmed with the enormous amount of textbooks,workbooks,etc.that DIFFERENT companies have been producing and advertising! Each company proclaims to provide teachers with an almost infallible SYLLABUS that seems to preclude the success of their students! And each year many teachers put in their orders to this or that company (whichever was most impressive )so that “the essential content will pre-exist the arrival of the students” I have seen many a teacher become slaves to the texts and promote the learning of “disconnected bits of information” instead of engaging the students in “creating a space”. I have been a disciple of Mme Colette Stourdzé, author of Le français

dans le monde, in Sevre since 1970 while studying at Middlebury. Her message: “the art of teaching is to render simple what is complex”. I applaud Middlebury’s initiative to entertain this discussion. I am presently teaching French at Iona College and in my classes we do stories, literary excerpts, and songs! It is fun and our activities reinforce language acquistion.

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By: Daniel Sharkovitz

Daniel Sharkovitz — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:17:22 +0000

The following excerpt from the article was an especially valuable bit of information for my work as a high school English teacher:

Jonathan Miller-Lane, an associate professor of education studies, said that students’ curiosity should be at the center of teaching-learning process. “Before we talk about learning, we need to talk about which questions matter to students and what students are curious about,” he said.

The idea that “we need to talk about which questions matter to students and what students are curious about” should be central to the teaching life. Yet, unfortunately, too many powerful organizations are working to curtail teaching that encourages students to ask questions. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which accredits many N.E. area schools,

now has a new “standard” that requires secondary school teachers to start all lessons with a teacher created essential question. After sending the organization recent research that supported the efficacy of having teachers create contexts in classes that encourage students to come up with their own essential questions so that they might own directions of inquiry–and asking for research to support their “standard,”–I was told in so many words that they still wanted teachers to ask the essential questions because they thought it was a good idea. Please, Professor Miller-Lane, continue helping your students understand the value of student generated questions.

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