Soap Box

Yesterday, I had a class at the university. I discussed my observations on their assignments from last week with them. I just felt the students needed to hear a couple of things.

One, checking your email is a professional responsibility as a teacher. Many students had not checked an important announcement during the week, and it really irritated me. The email asked them to respond if they were going to a conference on our class day with the other professor. I needed to know how to prepare for class. I should not have to text every single person, and I won't. I'm sure there were internal eyerolls. Twenty-three students are in this class, and I only received four responses. The responses came on the same morning as the class.

The second observation bothered me as I know what children need more than anything now. The students had an assignment that was a scenario for them to respond to as to what they would have done in the situation. Almost every single one of the student interns answered that they would show a video to build background. I just told them that reading a book about the topic to the young children would be a great way to build background AND introduce vocabulary at the beginning of the unit. They would be able to discuss the topic and use the vocabulary. They would be modeling the use of the vocabulary, and in turn, the students would start to use the words as they explored the topic. This generation of teachers-to-be seems to love exclusively using videos instead of reading books, as this topic is not the first time I have seen this during the semester. Young children's brains grow and develop rapidly during the first five years of life. The children can connect many pathways in the brain as the dendrites connect the neurons using verbal language. Videos are acceptable as a supplement, but do you think the vocabulary would be discussed as it would be if the teacher read the book? Not. I'm doing my best to try and make these student interns think. They are doing field experience in preschools across the county at this point.

I guess I'm still just an old-fashioned gal at heart. I was nice and tactful when discussing the topics, but it must still be gnawing at me on the inside because I was thinking about it again this morning. Children need to read or be read to and hear that language!

Later...