That Label Again
Nov. 9th, 2014 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyI am having a whole lot of school flashbacks now that I'm here at the Space Place.
See, my basic job description is Tell Kids How Cool Space Is. Which is pretty great. But my coworker, the guy who tries to keep all us presenters headed in more or less the same direction, has pointed out that I am specifically good at telling gifted kids about space.
"Oh, that's common," my friend who is a bona fide teacher informed me. "You teach to your own type. It takes a conscious effort if you're teaching other types."
So I've embarked upon a crash course in figuring how to teach other types of learners. It is REALLY DIFFICULT, you guys. When I was a kid, a lot of the techniques teachers used in the classroom to try to drill some knowledge into our skulls struck me as patronizing, redundant, and stupid. My coworker assures me that had more to do with my own brain than the teachers', and that the techniques that simply annoy me--like making kids repeat vocabulary terms--are quite useful. I have no idea if that's true, because if it is my own brain, there's no way I can be objective. So I have to believe him for now and try to do a lot of education that seems to me to be counterintuitive. And I keep flashing back to being a kid who had to put with this nonsense.
It also reminds me of something that was a unique problem for a gifted kid--that unlike other types of special ed, having/being a gifted kid was seen as desirable. And that made it really hard to talk about the problems involved (like frustration with bafflingly obtuse peers,* social awkwardness, and boredom at school) without getting a lot of "CRY MOAR, EMOKID" responses. Even now, I am not sure if I should talk about my life experience because people think it's bragging, when I'm mostly trying to figure out why the hell life seems so different to me than it does to others. So the Space Place job has been surprisingly revelatory.
But! It's not all terrible! The cool thing is that we are also called upon to tailor our lesson plans for different learning styles--like, for example, GIFTED KIDS. Which means that my unique talents are useful! I offered to try finding resources to expand our current lesson plans for the kids with the same kinds of upside-down brains as my own. So I get to dig into gifted resources and try them out, and it's gonna be AWESOME. I may be weird, but at least I an use my weirdness to help other weird kids really enoy their Valuable Learning Experiences. And that's what's making the Space Place job so darn much fun.
*I must have been annoying as fuck as a kid, beause I simply didn't understand how other people couldn't grasp concepts that seemed so simple.
See, my basic job description is Tell Kids How Cool Space Is. Which is pretty great. But my coworker, the guy who tries to keep all us presenters headed in more or less the same direction, has pointed out that I am specifically good at telling gifted kids about space.
"Oh, that's common," my friend who is a bona fide teacher informed me. "You teach to your own type. It takes a conscious effort if you're teaching other types."
So I've embarked upon a crash course in figuring how to teach other types of learners. It is REALLY DIFFICULT, you guys. When I was a kid, a lot of the techniques teachers used in the classroom to try to drill some knowledge into our skulls struck me as patronizing, redundant, and stupid. My coworker assures me that had more to do with my own brain than the teachers', and that the techniques that simply annoy me--like making kids repeat vocabulary terms--are quite useful. I have no idea if that's true, because if it is my own brain, there's no way I can be objective. So I have to believe him for now and try to do a lot of education that seems to me to be counterintuitive. And I keep flashing back to being a kid who had to put with this nonsense.
It also reminds me of something that was a unique problem for a gifted kid--that unlike other types of special ed, having/being a gifted kid was seen as desirable. And that made it really hard to talk about the problems involved (like frustration with bafflingly obtuse peers,* social awkwardness, and boredom at school) without getting a lot of "CRY MOAR, EMOKID" responses. Even now, I am not sure if I should talk about my life experience because people think it's bragging, when I'm mostly trying to figure out why the hell life seems so different to me than it does to others. So the Space Place job has been surprisingly revelatory.
But! It's not all terrible! The cool thing is that we are also called upon to tailor our lesson plans for different learning styles--like, for example, GIFTED KIDS. Which means that my unique talents are useful! I offered to try finding resources to expand our current lesson plans for the kids with the same kinds of upside-down brains as my own. So I get to dig into gifted resources and try them out, and it's gonna be AWESOME. I may be weird, but at least I an use my weirdness to help other weird kids really enoy their Valuable Learning Experiences. And that's what's making the Space Place job so darn much fun.
*I must have been annoying as fuck as a kid, beause I simply didn't understand how other people couldn't grasp concepts that seemed so simple.
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no subject
Date: 2014-11-10 03:20 am (UTC)As a teacher, I've learned to use a variety of techniques to help multiple learning styles, including things that I know drove me batty when I was a student, but I see that they work for some of the students. Try different things, and watch reactions. If you work with one group for any length of time, you can really pick out students' different learning styles. Even for a short time, you'll probably spot a few. When you try something different and a kid sits up straighter, or gets that "oh, wow, now I get it" look. Those moments are fantastic!
no subject
Date: 2014-11-10 03:30 am (UTC)Part of my philosophy is also that the Space Place is more to be an experience than an infodump. Though we do include a lot of information with the presentations, a lot of it is performance, and just getting them interested in it with the cool stuff you can see in the dome theater or the sphere or whatever. So I try to provide information understandably, but also figure that I'm more providing the exciting parts and the teachers can fill in the blanks (some better than others, true ...).
And I've had a few kids have a "WOW I GET IT" moment, or come up and ask a lot of questions. It IS awesome!
Yeah, nobody recognzes that gifted kids are SPECIAL ED and have their own unique challenges. If you try to present it that way people just think you're trying to humblebrag.