September 2019 – Page 13 – Weekly Writing & Blogs

Response to Mia Citerone

Group: Mia, Mimi, Leann, Ethan, John, Brandon

In our discussion group, we talked about how Freire compares students to trash cans. From our earliest days of education until the moment we receive our high school diplomas, we, as students, are forced to learn an abundance of academic material that we may never remember. Because teachers solely focus on covering material efficiently and completing chapters and assessments, students have no choice but to know material before a certain deadline. This method of teaching results in students simply memorizing material, rather than actually understanding it. Not only do teachers treat students as trash cans, but often the material they are providing is trash as well. All students have requirements of what classes they need to pass in order to further their education. Because students do not have a voice in what material is necessary to learn, it is common for them to dislike what they are being taught. Forcing students to be interested in subjects in which they are not is an ineffective teaching strategy. If teachers were to provide students with information that they both understand and are interested in, students would no longer feel like trash cans.

Response To Riley

Group: Riley, Jake H, Nick, Tyler

Riley lead an interesting discussion on Friday regarding if students are just robots who follow their teachers and what they say without learning basically. I found her question to be true to a certain extent. I believe the student is a direct representation of the teacher. If the teacher takes the time to know their students and get on a level where they can actually engage the thought and learning process that works for that student, then I feel like they will be successful. However, when the teacher just lectures to the class and follows the schedule to a “T”, then I feel like its more the student trying to keep up by memorizing information and then after a paper or exam, they forget it all. This method may work for some teachers and students but it surely does not apply to most and certainly not me. I feel teachers who know their students and students that know how to engage learning from their teacher’s learning will be a lot more successful and actually retain information. So in total the four of us that met came to the same conclusion and I truly believe it to be so.

Discussion 1

We talked about what the author meant when he said that teachers and students are opposites. Basically saying that the students had no input or choice about what was going on in the classroom. They were to be governed solely by the teacher and do exactly as they said. We believe, in the modern classroom, that this is no longer true. In modern day classrooms there is input and discussions with students to make the class run more smoothly to ensure that everyone can get a grasp of what is being taught and not simply be a bank for knowledge but actually know and understand what is being taught. We agreed that this theory could still apply to older teachers who have taught like that in the past, while younger teachers are more open to opinions from the students and value engagement in what they are teaching. As this theory may have been true when this was published, we can see a clear change in how classrooms are now run in more of a joint effort from the teacher and their students.

Robi, Sarah, Kyle, Gabby, Sabrina, Timothy

Response to Mia Citerone

During our discussion group we talked about how Freire refers to students as trash. Students have to memorize information to do good on the test. They usually don’t actually learn the information and will most likely forget it all after the test. If teachers took more time to teach the material, students would never need to go back and reteach themselves it. Teachers throw information at students like they are trash cans. Freire thinks that teachers aren’t actually teaching the students so they will learn it, he thinks that they are telling students information to see how well it can be memorized. Most students do good on the test they take right after the information is giving. They will forget some or all of the information when it’s time to take the midterm or final. Freire did a very good job at explaining how teachers teach and how most students don’t actually learn.

Group: Mimi, Mia, Ethan, Emily, John, Brandon

Response to Mia Citerone

Group: Mimi, Mia, Ethan, Leann, Emily, John and Brendan

During our discussion we talked about how the education system uses us as trash receptacles when it comes to learning and retaining information. We talked about how we feel like educators just throw useless pieces of knowledge and information at us and expect us to remember all of it for a test. We also talked about how the teachers are told to keep teaching a certain way even if they do not agree with it because that is how knowledge is tested. Yet we all said how we do not retain any of the information and basically have to relearn everything every year especially when it comes to math or useless history facts. We basically are just a product of our teachers and the amount of work they put into teaching us something will reflect on us.Over all our group had a good discussion on what Freire was trying to convey on how teachers refer to us as trash cans when it comes to learning in school.

Response to Sabrina

Sarah V, Kyle O, Gabby L, Sabrina, Timothy D, Christian G

The topic for our discussion group was that the teachers and students are the opposites of each other. We said that according to Freire, teachers think that they are superior to the students and that they do not let students show their creativeness. It is also hard for students to be their own person because of the teachers. We also discussed and we all agreed that most of the time students can teach teacher things too but the students do not get the recognition for it. Although we disagreed by some of the things that Freire said in his reading because now-a-days most of the teachers do appreciate students for their hard work and encourage them to participate and show their talent. We found out that Freire wrote this in 1970 which explained why the education system was like how he described because now it has been very improved. The younger teachers who are coming in the teaching field know how to interact with students and how to make the environment more creative. I agree with the fact that there are some old teachers that may come out as rude if you correct them because of my personal experience with an old teacher but most of the time teachers are appreciative and cooperative.

Response to Mia Citerone

During the group discussion we talked about how Freire calls his students trash. The students don’t learn they just remember and once the test or assignment is over, so is the knowledge they need. He talks about how teachers don’t care about their students and if a student really wants to succeed they have to really try themselves. The teachers are motion and lifeless beings. They are there to tell you how to memorize, not how to learn. Every year students forget how to do old material and need a refresher, but that wouldn’t be necessary if the student learned it the first time. Someone in the group discussion made a good point on how students are trash cans and the teachers are just throwing the trash at us hoping it will stick, but that is not always the case. Freire thoughts on education is that the teachers aren’t really teaching as much as they are just telling students information.
Group: Mimi, Mia, Leann, Emily, John, Brendan

Response to “Paulo Freire Discussion”

Sami Kakar, Nick Nolan, Abbey Johnson, Isabella DeSario, Dana Roeder, Leah Schreffler

In our discussion we all shared a similar view on how students are being taught in today’s classrooms. Thus we all agreed with Freire and believe teachers should let students have more hands on assignments. My psychology teacher in high school would always tie in a funny story with all of his lessons. Although they were funny his stories still helped a lot of students remember the information he taught us. There are a plethora of ways teachers can be creative in their lessons instead of teaching like an AI. We also discussed some alternative things teachers could put in their lessons including field trips, videos, special guests, etc. We’ve all experienced teachers that taught like this in our high school. We know first hand how this impacts students and the way they learn. We need to modernize our education system with the rest of the world. Sometimes students need to go outside of the classroom to understand whats being taught inside.

Response to Mackenzie Neiderer

Group members: Isabella Bedore, Mackenzie Neiderer, Adam Griffin, Jenna Schreiber, Josh Rogers, Luke Jarvis, Emily Foley

In our discussion, we talked about the concept of memorization. In today’s society teachers want students to be able to regurgitate everything that comes out of their mouths. It follows the notion that Freire mentioned that teachers know everything and students know nothing. In today’s education system students are so constrained due to the classes they are forced to take. Students have little to no freedom to take courses that will help aid them in their future. We are thrown into college, forced to pick a major, and forced to learn how to actually learn. The misguided system called education only cares about two things: money and grades. We are taught that standardized testing is so important to your education career. When in reality, teachers want you to reciprocate the information on the tests to get good scores to be able to gain money for the school. Students are so worried about their grades but never remember anything they learned to get these good grades. We are so focused on our grades rather than actually learning. The students with the highest grades are better at memorization than other students. Education is a competition and sadly this is why the education system fails students.

Discussion #1

Isabella DeSario, Abbey Johnson, Sami Kakar, Nick Nolan, Dana Roeder, Leah Schreffler

In our group discussion, we agreed on the idea that students memorize information rather than learning it. Many students that study for a test try to cram all of the information in by memorizing it. A few days later, that information is forgotten because there was no active learning process in retaining the information. Memorization has become a huge part of our education. I agree with Freire, that “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositors and the teacher is the depositor.” I think it would be more beneficial to students if teachers let their students experience the lesson rather than just listening. Students just read out of the textbook and memorize instead of understanding and taking in the material. Teachers need to be creative in ways to get the students to learn the material. Guest speakers and field trips are two examples of effective ways to teach students in a real-life learning experience, so that they can see the information applied to real life rather than memorizing a text book alone.

Response to Dana Roeder’s “Paulo Freire Discussion”

During the discussion, we talked about if we agree or disagree with the idea of education becoming an act of depositing and students being the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Everyone in the group agreed that we believe this is happening in education today. We talked about how teachers should become more hands on with what they teach instead of giving the information to the students and making them memorize instead of comprehending. I believe that this pertains to mostly high school from what I have experienced. Students need to understand the knowledge they are being taught to help better their education instead of listening to information that comes in one ear and goes straight out the other. Having a class where the teacher gives the students readings out of a textbook and no review of what they read about is a waste of time for the students and for the teacher. Education should be about understanding and reviewing information in a class in order to be successful. This topic is important to me because my high school’s education system was very similar to this concept and I believe it has affected my ability to learn. Being taught memorization with no comprehension puts me behind as a student. I agree that teachers teach students in this way and I believe it is a major problem.

Discussion with Dana Roeder, Isabella DeSario, Sami Kakar, Nick Nolan, Abbey Johnson

Response to Mackenzie Neiderer

Discussion Participants: Isabella Bedore, Mackenzie Neiderer, Adam Griffin, Jenna Schreiber, Josh Rogers, Luke Jarvis, Emily Foley

In our group discussion, we focused on the fact that school is solely based on memorization instead of learning how to use the information for reality. School ‘s care about their reputation and want their students to have good grades for a push for more funding for example, schools want their rankings to look good for standardized tests. This domino affects its way down to the teachers because they care about their outlook as a teacher essentially just showering the students with information with no context of how to apply that information. We also discussed how high school has become a competition for memorization in which teachers want you to become a better student rather than a learner. For example, in AP classes you can get an A in the course but when it comes to the AP test many students bomb the test. This further supports the notion that teachers teach how to be a better student rather than a student who actually uses and learns from the knowledge the teachers provide. The difference between a student and a learner is that a student studies to do good on a test in comparison to a learner who studies to get a better understanding and knowledge. At the end of the discussion, we talked about how the teacher is not to blame for this since they were taught like this.

Response to Mackenzie Neiderer

Discussion Participants: Isabella Bedore, Mackenize Neiderer, Adam Griffin, Jenna Schreiber, Luke Jarvis, Emily Foley

In our group discussion, we focused on memorization in education and dove deeper on the topic further talking about memorization and standardized testing. In Paulo Freire’s “The Banking Concept of Education”, Freire discusses how in education teachers act as if they know everything and the students are ignorant and now nothing. The teachers then continue to give out information and expect the students to receive and store the information like “containers”, and memorize that information. We compared this statement to our own individual high school experiences and discovered that our experiences are very similar to Freire’s claim. We all agreed that memorization was heavily pushed on us and we do not remember much of what we actually learned in high school. Our group believes that teachers and schools cared more about test scores to gain more money so they made us memorize information to pass test to make our test scores look better. We also believe that memorizing so much in high school has limited some of our creativity and has made is more like robots taking in so much information but not really understanding it. We ultimately came to the conclusion that teachers have become lazier later in high school and care more about memorization than about learning and as a result we have been negatively affected.

Response to Dana Roeder’s “Paulo Freire Discussion”

During our meeting we discussed the topic of students being the “depositories” and I believe it depends on the circumstances. Certain types of education and teaching can very easily do well for a student. Many students benefit from hands on teaching and experiences. Doing experiments or just being more involved in a lesson are proven to be much more helpful for those learning. Other types such as lectures or reading out of a textbook may not be as beneficial to pupils in a class. Students sit in a classroom and are told information more often than not and are expected to memorize from a book or notes which not always the best way to learn. The student is left out to dry while the teacher spews information for them to keep. Paulo Freire points out an important fact within this piece that should be understood by teachers and professors around the globe; students cannot be held to an expectation to understand information when it is just thrown at them.

Response to Riley

Group: Riley, Nick, Jake H., Tyler

We all agreed with the idea that the students are just a product of the teacher and are like robots that follow what the teacher says. We did think that there are classes where you are more like a robot than others. Classes that involve math or science may make a student feel more like a robot because they do not know how to solve a problem and the teacher has to teach them the right way to complete the problem. I know that these are the classes that I tend to feel more like a robot. Some English classes though allow you to be more creative and do things how you want to do them. By assigning a project instead of having the class sit down and listen to a lecture, the students have more creativity in completing the task. For the most part, it depends on how the teacher wants to get the information across to the students.

Response to Olivia Vearling’s Discussion

Our discussion started with the statement, “teachers know everything and students know nothing.” I would consider this a common belief in the world today. We all agreed that teachers should make sure that their students are understanding the information and that they aren’t just talking at them. One member of the discussion said, “The whole thing made me think of a suppressed society” where students are being forced to learn by how the teacher is teaching and not in a way that is actually beneficial to the student. We also said, sometimes, teachers might not care if the students are actually retaining the information, and they could just talk at them to get all the information out. I think that this idea “that teachers know everything and students know nothing” has become such a common thought, because you are paying so much money for an education and that must mean that you are learning everything you need to. But, I also believe that everybody learns in different ways and that there can not just be one standard way of teaching.

Laura McGroary

Jeff Biancaniello

Amanda Regan

Seamus Corkery

Cait Mangini

Haley Clark

Sam Livorno

Makayla Medycki

Gwen Jordan

Maura Kelly

Olivia Vearling

David Macmullen

Responce to Makenzie Nedierer

MaKenzie neiderer

Isabella Bedore

Adam Griffin

Jenna Schreiber

Josh Rogers

Luke Jarvis

Emily Foley

Paul Freire puts emphasis on the idea that students only memorize and not actually obtain the information. In our discussion, we went into depth trying to decipher what the education really is about.

Throughout our educational careers thus far, we all agreed on one main focus, memorization. In classes, we would just memorize the vocab and remember it for the quiz next week and repeat. There was no actual learning. Standardized tests are so heavily pushed that it creates such an unhealthy learning environment. Not only does our scores represent the school, but as well as the teachers. This makes teachers care less about us understanding and learning the material but just temporarily memorizing it, so the school doesn’t come criticize them. With getting these standardized test scores comes the money. The better the students do, the more money the school gets treating us like objects. This creates such an unhealthy and competitive atmosphere. Almost like Darwinism in the education world, but instead of survival of the fittest, its who can memorize the best. The ones who can, get the best scholarships and pay the most money for top tier schools just to say you went there. Money Is the main focus behind the education system. The more we, as students, memorize, the more money they get.

Response to Mackenzie Neiderer

Group Members: Emily Foley, Mackenzie Neiderer, Isabella Bedore, Adam Griffin, Jenna Schreiber, Josh Rogers, Luke Jarvis

In our discussion we talked about how we’re taught to memorize information for tests, instead of learning how to apply our knowledge to life. Schools care a lot about their reputation and their image, and about getting money, so they teach us how to memorize information in hopes that we do well on standardized tests and get good grades. In high school, we were told that doing well on the SAT’s were extremely important to be successful in the future, and to show the school’s “good teaching”. Grades were all that we cared about in high school, instead of actually learning. In reality, standardized tests and grades aren’t as important as they used to be, and colleges and companies are looking for more experience rather than at test scores. Some people said that their schools forced them to take higher level/AP courses to make the school look better. We were taught these things, instead of learning about real life experiences and skills, how to teach ourselves, how to be a “learner”. Instead, we’re taught how to memorize information to do well on a test. However, memorization doesn’t always show good teaching/learning; everyone has different methods of learning, and some people aren’t good test takers. We asked the questions “what’s the point” if we are learning just to take a test? Why is school just a competition about “who can memorize the best”? Maybe teachers do this without realizing, since this is what they were taught in school.

Response to Grady Leonard

In today’s discussion, Grady Leonard, Mike Tresoikas, and I discussed the idea that the “teacher knows everything, and the students know nothing.” In the modern classroom, to be a teacher you must have a college degree and we all agreed that even though students do not have a degree whilst the teacher does, that doesn’t mean the teacher cannot learn lessons from the students.

Teachers have experienced life longer than the students, but each bring different life experiences to apply in the classroom. When students enter classrooms, it is the stereotypical thought of the teacher that their students have no knowledge for what is to be taught, and that’s not always the case. As humans, we’re always evolving, and the new generations need to teach the older generations the new ways and concepts.

I really liked mike’s analogy that being book smart or street smart is just like the teacher who knows everything, and the student knows nothing idea. The teachers are the ones who are book smart while the students are the ones who are street smart. The teachers need the students to help them navigate through the new and modern ways the student’s generation brings; however, the students need teachers to teach them knowledge of the past generations and their experiences to prepare them for life in the future.

In conclusion, we all agreed that the idea that “the teacher knows everything, and the students know nothing” is just a stereotype of society by older generations.

Student=Robot (discussion on 9/6 @ 10 am)

Attendies: Tlyer Evans, Nick Gamba, and Jake Heikkinen