Book Reflection by Pat Parks

Final Reflection for Why Don’t Students Like School?
I chose this book because after many years of teaching and many years of seeing many changes I thought I had a little idea of why students don’t like school. My ideas and the authors were miles apart – we are not surprised I know. My thought was students don’t like school because in the world around them. They are constantly surrounded by technology, video games, and a fast moving environment to keep their attention. Let’s see some of the ideas of Willingham.
I found the ideas of the author to be very interesting and they made a lot of sense. I have decided to summarize some of the parts of the book that I found to be of most interest to me. In chapter one, one of the facts that stood out to me was that the brain is not designed for thinking, it is designed to save you from having to think. Thinking is slow and unreliable, but it has been found that people enjoy mental work if they are successful. That reminds me of how we teach, to move a child forward we find where they are and challenge them appropriately with work that is not too hard and not to easy. It said that teachers should encourage students to think and to give them work that is not to difficult. If success is always just out of reach, school will not be a place they want to be. I also found the statement, “successful thinking relies on four factors: information from the environment, facts in long-term memory, procedures in long-term memory and the space in working memory. If any one of these factors is inadequate, thinking fails.”
As teachers, it seems that we are all about getting students to “think.”
I also was intrigued with the question, Is Drilling Worth It? Part of a comment made by Alfred North Whitehead is, “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” Through the use of practice we help make mental processes more automatic. To be smart about practice our author tells us the practice must be spread out over time and activities. We need to come up with many creative ways to practice skills and the basic skills will continue to be practiced while students work on more advanced skills.
Not only do students need to be considered in the question of practice, but also educators. According to Willingham, “Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved.” The program Willingham laid out is something I would be very interested in taking part in. His steps are: videotape teaching so it can be thought deeply about and so what happened can be remembered. Teachers need to see classroom dynamics because experts see the world differently than novices – they see deep structure not surface structure because they have deep experience in their field. To recognize dynamics of your classroom you must see others. Background knowledge is important for both students and teachers. For the teacher the background knowledge is not just subject matter knowledge, but knowledge of students and how they interact with you, each other, and with the material that is taught. We also learned that human intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work. Teachers need to show students through example that hard work does pay off.
“Thus, to ensure that your students follow you, you must keep them interested; to ensure their interest, you must anticipate their reactions, and to anticipate their reactions, you must know them.” “Know your students.”