Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Zone of Proximal Development

I struggle with Zone of Proximal Development. When do I need to help a student and when should I let them struggle. I feel like they come to me for answers rather than help. One of the questions I hate the most is, "Mr. Kehler is this right?". I'd like them to take a risk and not necessarily worry about if they got it perfect right then. I keep trying to teach them that we learn by mistakes and I don't want to be holding their hands through all their work. They get frustrated because they think I'm not doing my job and I get frustrated because they I feel like they want me to justify all their answers. So I got back to my question. When is my helping helping and when is it robbing a student of the opportunity to work through a questions and learn from struggling. It's one of the things that causes friction in the classroom. Ugh, Teaching is so hard. And no I didn't think it would be easy!
cheers

2 comments:

  1. ergh, this is my struggle too. I've started using the phrase 'use your own judgement' a LOT. On the other hand, I clearly remember my grade 11 physics teacher...because he had this idea that you had to figure everything out for yourself. Which basically meant he was abdicating all teaching responsibilities. Needless to say, I did NOT become a physicist. That was my most frustrating high school course.

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  2. I may be waaaay out to lunch here but is there a question beneath the question? When they ask, "is this right?" are they really asking, "am I on the right track here?" A little reassurance goes a long way no matter what your age. The first and biggest hurdle of learning something is knowing that you have the fundamentals right. At that point we're usually ready to apply those rules to other things independently. I think the hardest job for a teacher would be to determine who's being lazy and who's lacking confidence. But hey, what would I know? :)

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