It's not a job, it's a Lifestyle: Different Style of Teaching

I have been to my TE 401 field placement three times now and I am starting to understand what goes on in the classroom and observing how the students are learning. I am in a 3rd grade class and my cooperating teacher (CT) said that this class is one of the calmest she has ever had in 20 years of teaching. The students are mostly African American and Hispanic, and some have really big personalities while others are extremely shy. I just finished up giving students math assessments, so my CT can figure out what she needs to emphasize her curriculum and lessons on this year to help students get better in the areas that they didn't do as well. Basically I have not been in the classroom observing too much because I have bee out in the hallway administering assessments. I finished them up on Thursday and was able to spend some significant time in the classroom. The students are divided into groups and have 6-7 centers they have to complete each day and a couple of the centers they have to listen to cassette tapes and do a worksheet. Well I found out on Thursday that it's not a random person talking in these cassettes, but my CT made them and she is teaching the children through these tapes. This made me realize that I have not seen my teacher do any type of instruction yet and she has told me that the students rotate through the centers until 1:30 each day. So in doing the math this means that students would only be getting at maximum 2 hours of "live" instruction. I don't think it is possible to teach social studies, science, math and literacy in 2 hours of everyday. I have come to believe that the students are being taught through these tapes and this bothers me a bit.

Not all students are going to learn from hearing someone talk, while working on a worksheet and maybe looking through a book as a reference. Some students learn better from seeing a teacher instruct, taking notes and listening to the teacher talk. If there is some type of commotion going on in the classroom or a book is dropped to the floor and makes a loud noise the children on the head phones typically look over and are distracted from the tapes. They do not have the chance to go back and rewind them if they missed it because there are one or two other children listening in at the same time. The students end up missing important information and have no way of asking questions if they were to not understand something. This occurred on Thursday when one of the students was confused and did not understand what they needed to do and I could not help them because I had not listened to the tape. The only thing I could do was tell them to try to get through the tape one more time before they had to switch stations. It was very frustrating that there was no way for me to help these students, and there won't be any way to help them in the future unless I listen to the tapes in the morning so I know what is on there, just in case they need help.

When I discussed this type of teaching to my friends they asked me "If these students are being taught through tapes then what is the point of teachers?" I thought this was a great point because if every teacher adopted this teaching style teachers would really not be needed. You would just need someone to make sure the students were listening to the right tapes and making sure they finished them every day. Teaching is supposed to be interactive. You are supposed to create meaning for the students to keep them interested and excited about learning. Students are supposed to be given the opportunity to ask questions, make comments or have discussions about the lessons or content. By teaching through tapes none of these qualities or aspects of teaching are being reached. My hope is that my CT is doing 'normal teaching' in the afternoons for those 2 hours, so the students are not just listening to tapes all day long. I am going to talk to her more about these tapes and hopefully go in on an afternoon sometime soon to see what type of teaching occurs then.