Writer: Merik Lalic-Shields
As I think back on my time as a high school student and the time I poured into learning the many concepts taught to the crowd of students, I was only able to digest half of what the teacher was saying, though due to the immense amount of materials needed to be covered, the teachers didn’t give enough time to the students to discuss problems or formulate questions. Right now I believe the biggest flaw is the lack of interactivity due to time restraints in making a rapid, non-patient classroom.
Students need time to take in what you are saying and time to decide what they do and do not understand, when a tone of stuff is being thrown at you it becomes overwhelming and your brain may turn off like mine has done many times over turning what should be an hour of learning into a dazed and confused mess. The big workaround that many students find themselves having to do is outsourcing their education with youtube or khan academy, the big help of these is the self-pacing allowing you to take your time and think about what is being said, the only problem with this is the inability to get quick responses to questions which leave students in a difficult situation.
I struggled with understanding a lot of key concepts discussed in class and when I would watch videos on my own I would have a lot of questions that I would have to keep to myself for the most part this is when I decided that the best thing to do was instead to watch videos before class allowing me to conceptualize all that is being taught organize my thoughts and bring them to class the next day, this worked immensely, but when it came time for class my questions would still be left unanswered as the teachers didn’t have the time to answer them and none had any sort of office hours that could be used. I found myself once again perplexed by what to do as I had thought that this idea that I had set was the best for pacing, taught individual learning, and allowed me to organize my thoughts but the current system didn’t allow for my work to go anywhere and this was until my grade 11 physics teacher introduced the idea of an asynchronous classroom where lessons would be done at home in your own time and class could be spent on doing practice problems physical examples and activities which enhanced understanding of hard to grasp topics and allowed for the class to be not only more useful but more fun.
I had always wished for this asynchronous classroom idea to catch on within the school in general but most importantly STEM classes allow an individual learning plan to work for a large classroom.
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