Lesson Learned #4 (Part 1 and Part 2, A Defense)

In class, if you don’t know the answer, make one up. With confidence.

Which is why Class 10F now thinks that the District of Columbia was named after Columbia, the man who bartered the compromise between Virginia and Maryland for the location of the capital. 

Somehow Columbus also got thrown into that conversation… He did sail from Spain, right??

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After my previous post about my classroom antics, specifically about my predilection for fudging facts about history and geography, I had a few comments from a couple actual teachers (I believe somewhere in the States). I went to respond to each of them in private, but neither maintains an ask or submission section, so I decided to respond publicly.

The comments my glib post engendered: 

Absolutely not.  You do NOT make up an answer.  You make it an opportunity to show how to look something up, say you’ll come back to that question later, or offer a challenge for them to find the answer!

Agreeing with NOT making it up. I have a Parking Lot cork board in my classroom, where we park questions that I can’t answer right away. Sometimes I look the answer up, sometimes a student does. Once we have the answer, I tack it up with the question and tell the class. Students need to see that teachers are still learning, too.

My response:

You’re absolutely right, ladies. There should be the opportunity for classroom learning and research to probe intellectual curiosity and the desire/ability to seek out additional information. However, I don’t live/teach in an environment that allows for such things. I teach English as a Foreign Language in a high school in rural Cambodia. My students don’t have access to research books or free internet in the community let alone in the classroom or on the school grounds. My classrooms don’t even have window panes or electricity. I would love to encourage my students to pursue learning past the lesson, but the Ministry of Education mandates that we complete the required national curriculum, and with teacher/student absences and liberal holiday-taking, we’re constantly in a rush to finish everything. So one lesson can very rarely ever extend to another day. Beyond that, I’m not a history teacher; I’m an English teacher. I want my students to improve their English skills, which they do by listening to my stories and asking follow up questions. I’m not concerned that I made up the date of the Louisiana Purchase today with my 11th graders. I’m thrilled that they had the excitement to figure out how to ask me in English about the Statue of Liberty and how that conversation - one which they were able to understand and in which they could participate - evolved into a discussion of Manifest Destiny. The facts aren’t important to me, not really. It doesn’t really affect their lives what the “Columbia” in Washington D.C. means. But when we talk about what liberty means and how even in a land of freedom there is still discrimination, those thoughts on culture and human nature can affect them.

That all said, I perused each of your blogs. You seem like lovely ladies and amazing, dedicated teachers. Just try not to be so harsh on an untrained teacher trying to make the best learning experience she can for her students in the situation they’ve been placed.  

(posted May 28 and 29, 2012)