From Sabertooth to Harry Potter and Back Again

Use your newly create blog to post your journal entry about The Sabertooth Curriculum and the first design principle we created in class.  Complete this entry by Sunday at 5 pm.  Remember the three questions that guide professional reflection.

• What did I learn? 
• What does it mean and what supports that position? 
• What are the ways in which it might impact my practice?

         The Sabertooth Curriculum, really put a lot of things within education into perspective for me. Being apart of education, I think that sometimes we are so used to doing what needs to be done that we can miss the reflection piece that is really necessary to make education effective. Sabertooth gave that reflection piece; in fact it made me question things that I did not even know that I needed to reflect upon.

         The most important thing that I learned from Sabertooth is found in a quote on page 25. “He knew how to do things his community needed to have done, and he had the energy and will to go ahead and do them. By virtue of these characteristics he was an educated man.” I think this quote speaks volumes about our education system. Are we really preparing kids for the world and helping their community? How do we know what the community needs? These are the questions that as educators we need to try to answer. The problem with trying to prepare kids for their community is that we as educators do not get to make decisions about what we teach curriculum-wise to prepare the kids for the world. The curriculum is passed down to us from the powers that be and it is our job to impart that to the kids. In my opinion, this is not always the best thing we should be teaching the kids- the things that would most help them in their search to be a meaningful member of their community. I think that the open dialogue that Peddiwell uses about preparing the students for their community is echoed all throughout Sabertooth. The stories about the Paleolithic society are filled with what the community needs, and as the lectures go further on, we see them moving farther and farther away from the needs of the community and more towards what they feel are the historical conventions are to uphold (fish grabbing, tiger scaring, and horse clubbing). We see the community upholding these traditional subjects even though the community no longer needs to be taught these things. This begs the question of our own community and its teachings: what exactly are we teaching that has been rendered superfluous by time? How can we better adapt to what we need in our communities currently? This is a question we all must face as educators and also will try to answer through the Design Principals and Processes we are making and discussing in class. Actually, if the members of the Paleolithic community had the PICKLE thought process- perhaps their community would have made a better more ideal curriculum for their particular community needs.

All of this reflection being said, there were several parts of Sabertooth that I found to be really interesting and that I made an instant connection with. I am a big reader and there was a particular passage on page 42 of Sabertooth that really reminded me of Harry Potter. Peddiwell is talking about how the community leaders started to think about the fact that the students in their Paleolthic community only needed the THEORY of these skills (fish grabbing, pony clubbing, and tiger scaring) without having to actually practice the skills. Everything would become the theory of the skill- not the actual doing of these long practiced skills. This particular part reminded me of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when Professor Umbridge is the Defense Against the Dark Arts school subject teacher. She is a terrible character and one of the most hated in the entire Harry Potter series. She comes in to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and revolutionizes the way the subject is being taught. She- like in Sabertooth- decides that the knowledge of the skills of defending themselves against evil is enough to pass their Ordinary Wizarding Level (OWL) tests. She goes on to say that they do not need to use magic; they need to only know the facts. This connection really reminded me of the way the SOLs are in Virginia and that we have cut down so much on the doing of things in education. Like for instance, at my school we used to do a Colonial Day where the fourth grade did a whole project and the grade would get together for weeks to practice skits, music and songs, and dances. They would even put on a small play. But, as soon as the SOLs became more and more intense- that was the first thing to go out of the curriculum. Even though many students said that it was their favorite part of the year. This is something we need to look into, no more than the teachers in Harry Potter- are we doing the very best we possibly can? Or is it that we are trying to teach to the test and not doing any actual practicing of those needed skills? This truly is food for thought and something we as educators need to be aware of.

As far as impacting the ways that I would practice education is that I would try to bring back more of the practicing of skills into the classroom. I know that for me, as a librarian this kids need to learn how to use the online library catalog. Just this past week, I taught them how to use it, but instead of droning on and on about it, I decided to have the kids do a library scavenger hunt to practice the skills rather than just knowing the theory of finding the books in the library. This, to me, is much more effective because it makes the kids use the knowledge they have to answer the questions. Instead of just the theory of the library catalog they need to go out and use it to find specific answers to the questions. As soon as I told the kids they were going to practice it with the scavenger hunt they were super excited to go out and DO it. I think that if you give kids activities- things like QR codes, or scavenger hunts, or web quests, especially when you integrate technology they are learning that much more. Their excitement level also goes up so much because it is interacting with the skill, not just hearing about it.