Teach

From a philosophical standpoint, I think Matt captured my thoughts.  At one point in Teach, he said that if there isn’t a good foundation, there’s nothing to build one.  This captures the focus of why I believe so strongly in essentialism.  Students have to have some general knowledge in certain subjects before they can build on it and develop more complex ideas.  If students don’t have that basic knowledge, then it becomes significantly more difficult for us to teach them.

                Another major point in this film that caught my attention was the use of new technology and incorporation of new ideas into the classroom.  The statistics used in the film show my thoughts on this.  Similarly to the situation where students were using laptops to increase their education, I think it is effective in the short run to use new technology and concepts.  In the long run, it will be less effective.  Throughout the film, I felt myself rooting for Joel, who relied mainly on his own abilities as a lecturer.

                I also think it was important for this film to show the difficulties that arise in differentiation.  It seemed like Matt did a decent job of this by focusing his time on the students who were falling behind and having the students who were reading on grade level do independent work.  However, I don’t think this strategy would be very effective in a secondary education classroom.  I spent most of my time analyzing Joel, since he teaches the same content as me, and it seems like differentiation would be much more difficult in that environment.