Field Experience Blog

The Importance of Interactive Learning Teaching should be an interactive process instead of a one-sided task. In order for students to be fully engaged, interested, and motivated to learn, they must be given opportunities to personally connect with the material and to share their own ideas. In their book Making the Journey, Leila Christenbury and Ken Lindblom note that, "When we [teachers] insist that all students know--and repeat back to us--minute details, when we place emphasis on senseless tasks or minor aspects of assignments...we set students up for compliant passivity" (136). In order to prevent a classroom situation in which students are passive recipients of knowledge, teachers should aim to create learning experiences that prompt students to think critically and to not only understand the material but to also realize why it matters.  During a recent observation, I really admired how a teacher of an 11th grade class handled a reading activity. At the b...