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| Why iron a shirt when you can engage in Extreme Ironing! (img credit: http://www.oddee.com/item_97001.aspx) |
Roller-skating? Too lame.
Take those wheels off and put them single file? EXTREME!
Wooden planks attached to each foot? Sure - if you're cross country skiing.
Put both feet on a single board and surf down the mountain? EXTREME!
Jumping out of a plane? Passe.
Jump off a building barely tall enough for a parachute to be effective? EXTREME!
It occurs to me that extremists and fanatics are dangerous. When one adheres to one side of a spectrum only, they risk entering a world of fanaticism. It's not unlike current attitudes in education.
Educators are often asked to do more. To be more. If they use older strategies, they are labeled dinosaurs who have opted to not keep up. Worse, they are treated as though they want to harm their students. This is a disservice to all involved. It wrongfully vilifies swaths of teachers who are working hard to ensure their students understand basic principles. It wrongfully - nay, dangerously - elevates teachers who now feel as though their decision to "go paperless" or "no homework ever" or "worksheets are the devil" has given them some sort of pedagogical superiority over the plebeians in their midst.
It hasn't. For the most part, there's not tremendous difference between the teacher who knows how to utilize the tools she's always used combined with developing relationships and the teacher who is trying a newer strategy with not much proven success combined with developing relationships. The outliers are - on one end - the ones who have a real knack for understanding exactly how much new their students and community are capable of dealing with, and - on the other end - the ones who can't see that their students are craving more but continue to put demeaning work full of low expectations in front of them.
Please stop putting the EXTREME up on this pedestal. There's never been a time when 100% of anything is the best way to go. Balance in your work and personal life is a goal to feeling well-rounded and happy. Balance between the use of old and new techniques can allow your students to experience varied things, which will, in turn, create more well-rounded, capable adults.
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