JOIN THE CONVERSATION—LEARNING FROM STUDENTSQuestions to Consider:
Many of you have worked as counselors, tutors, or classroom assistants. What have you
learned from your students? How will these lessons help you be a better teacher?SECTION C: HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO “SEE” AND “HEAR”
STUDENTS?
Patricia Carini and the Prospect Center (Himley, with Carini, 2000) developed an approach to
teaching that includes a “descriptive review” of students. It involves teams of teachers in
careful observation of children and a “disciplined” review of their ideas and work. The pur-
poses of the process are “to make the child more visible by coming to understand him or
her more fully and completely as a particular thinker and learner” and to develop in teach-
ers “the habits of mind—the stance—of careful observation and description” (p. 127). Close
and disciplined observation and review allows teachers to relate to children as human be-
ings with a world of potential, rather than as problems to be solved. Teachers discover stu-
dent academic and character strengths, see the connections students make between ideas,
and learn how they make meaning of their world. The process supports the caring environ-
ment described by Noddings and makes it possible for teachers to scaffold on the strengths
of individual students as they plan instruction.
Another advantage of careful observation of students by teams of teachers is that it helps
us examine exactly what we are doing. Teachers are human, and I know I have made quick
and unfair judgments about students and classes. When you talk issues over with other teach-
ers, you get to see a different side of students and events. I have also reviewed videotapes of
my own teaching and the work of other teachers, and discovered that what we thought had
happened in the class was quite different from what had taken place. The research team of
Sadker and Sadker (1994) has prepared videotapes of exemplary teachers, who unconsciously
were providing more attention to the boys in their classes than to the girls. After reviewing the
tapes, the teachers were able to change the way they related to students.
Relationship is fundamental to instruction. Maxine Greene, a major 20th-century Ameri-
can educational philosopher, argues that to create democratic classrooms, teachers must
learn to listen to student voices. Listening allows teachers to discover what students are
thinking, what concerns them, and what has meaning to them. When teachers learn to listen,
it is possible for teachers and students to collectively search for metaphors that make
knowledge of the world accessible to us.
Attention to individual students takes time, but if Noddings, Greene, and Carini are cor-
rect, it is fundamental to transforming schools and classrooms and reaching all children. I
think it is significant that when a child has recognized special needs, this kind of personal at-
tention to the way they learn is mandated by law. Teachers, counselors, and psychologists
develop an individualized education program (IEP) for each student that is reevaluated on a
regular basis.
Close attention to the needs and learning styles of individual students is also a goal in
middle schools where teachers are organized as interdisciplinary teams who have the same
classes, rather than into academic departments. In these schools, teachers and counselors
meet daily and engage in an ongoing review of individual student progress. This helps team
members to better know individual students and allows them to intervene before a minor
upset grows into a major problem.
108 CHAPTER 4