As I write this half of the world has entered 2011; I live in a place that is one of the last to ring in the new year, and in this rural area, rather than fireworks or a ball dropping, New Year’s Day will be heralded by gunshots fired – not AK-47s or Saturday Night Specials, but hunting rifles. As I head for the hills, I got to thinking about resolutions. In addition to the usual eat better and exercise more, I wondered to myself what sort of resolutions I should have as a history teacher.
One possible resolution is to ignore the tick-tock I sometimes hear in my head as a group of really engaged students have gone way off topic. Pressed for time already, I get nervous, thinking to myself that I will never get the syllabus done in time. Whoa Nellie! The truth is that, in many of these instances, there is critical thinking and active debate going on, and while the subject may not be relevant to the IB curriculum, the skills certainly are. Sometimes the students will gain more from these ad hoc discussions than any activity I could devise, and they become the architects of their own learning (Vygotsky alert!).
