Re: Process & Product
From: Kathy Severson
Email: kseverson@christianheritage.org
Date: June 02, 2008
Comments
I concur with Trudi. I am currently a Pre-K 3 and 5 teacher, but to that from teaching jr. high for 14 years. There are many commonalities between the typical 8th grader and the typical 3 yr. old. I think great teaching/learning is not about the subject (outcomes) one teaches, but keying into what excites and motivates the learner to unlock andinterest, take on an achievable challenge and stick with it until mastery-leading to a more acute or higher interest, thus starting the process again.
I thaught French to my jr. highers, so it was very much like teaching the early childhood language brain-meaning that they were approaching the second language (if we wanted lasting learning) in the same way a baby acquires his first language. The tecqhnique to do this is called TPR (total physical response) where students move in response to the language-lots of acting out and movement because it was proven to be the way most brains could process the new info so it became second nature. When I began to teach preschool, I was able to take this same idea to preschool-it seemed so obvious to me. I been so excited about learning about the body-brain connection, especially as so many schools in my area (Chicago North Shore) have pushed down so many expectations to quickly advance children in visible outcomes in learning.
The other reason I am so interested is that my husband and two children are very severely ADHD. My husband had a brain spect-so I began reading up about 7 years ago. There are so many theories about repetative activities to build synaptic activity, bio feed back for training brain waves, eye convergence therapy, OT activities, etc. The commonality I notice is that each of these things are process oriented-its the repetition and process doing the therapy that does the brain good. That's what causes the brain to be able to achieve the perceived outcome. In other words, the product is just the by product of the process-that's what the real "thing" was...it's just that the product is often more measurable in school.
