C4T #4

Spencer's Scratch Pad
John Spencer is a middle school teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. His most recent blog, which he posted on April 13, 2011, is titled 'A Reminder from My Son.' Mr. Spencer's son was playing in the yard building a tower with sticks. Mr. Spencer's conversation with his son is this:

"What are you working on?" Spencer asks.

"I'm making a tower out of sticks," he says.

"Why?" Spencer asks.

"I want to see if it's possible," his son says.

"Why is it working?" Mr. Spencer points to it.

"Because I tried it," he says.

The two answers his son gave him lingered in his head.

"Can I help?" Mr. Spencer asks.

"Yeah, you can help. Even if you mess it up, I'll let you help," he says.

"I'll try not to mess it up."

Then it got knocked down and Joel, his son, responded with, "I knew it would happen. It's not strong enough. Can we get some concrete?"

"We don't have concrete."

"Okay," he says as he begins to rebuild.

Like Mr. Spencer, Joel's answers made me think. The answers themselves are very simple: "I wanted to see if it would work," and "Because I tried it." It's a good method to trying teaching methods also. We learn to guess and check in math so why can't we learn to teach by guess and check? Somebody has to try it!
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Mr. Spencer blogged about writing. He clearly love to write but he HATED writing in school. His reasons why made sense, too! When he was younger, just learning to write, all of the guidelines would stress him out. Teachers asked questions like "Where is your concept map," "Why aren't you editing what you wrote," and (my personal favorite) "Why are you brainstorming?" The requirements teachers made led writing to be a painful, arduous task, not a fun form of expression. Once Spencer began free writing he realized exactly why he hated writing in school. I was reading through some comments on his post and I laughed at one that said "There's nothing like red ink bleeding down your paper." That's all it said; I just thought it was funny. :) Some teachers critique so heavily on the little things that a well written paper can go unnoticed. I enjoy writing so when I'm a teacher I'll find ways to let my students have fun with their writing.