By Eric Furth
Calendar Editor
Some teachers’ decisions to experiment with teaching styles more attuned to daily life is extremely effective because it provides a window for countless different scenarios students may encounter in the future.
Average Mira Costa class curriculum involves teachers lecturing about specific units and chapters of a course and regularly testing them based on the information the students have been taught. Some teachers have decided to educate students about various subjects, but do so in a method based around lecturing from personal experiences and recent current events, not specifically tailored to the students being tested on it.
According to Psychology and Government teacher Glenn Marx, a class should contain the “nuts and bolts”, the basic requirements contained in the class outline and standards, as well as abstract and critical-thinking skills that the teacher incorporates from a personal level of experience and research on the topics being discussed. Marx is one of the most well-known teachers to utilize this teaching style in the classroom, and has garnered a reputation for being hard but fair in his teaching style.
Too many educators have fallen prey to teaching strictly to a test for the benefit of achieving higher test scores rather than ensuring that the concepts would be completely understood by the students. Having teachers apply lessons from the textbook directly to real-life scenarios allows students to comprehend these principles in a more realistic sense.
According to one of Marx’s AP Government Class Presidents Shubhayu Bhattacharyay, he is in favor of Marx’s approach to teaching the basics of government. The class is engaging, and Marx makes a conscious effort towards getting all students involved in discussion and lectures on the current political standings in Congress, the Senate, and the ongoing 2016 Presidential campaigns. These examples provide insight on class lessons and how they function in real life.
In countless instances, textbooks have failed to address crucial and relevant aspects of the fundamentals they’re attempting to convey because they lack demonstrable examples. This leads to the concepts being largely ignored on behalf of disinterested students who feel that they’ll never need to use them. Students will merely memorize facts for the sake of getting a good grade on a test, then immediately forget it.
According to Marx, as long as any class isn’t simply abstract skills with no way of testing and is geared based on the goals set forth by the Expected Schoolwide Learning Results (ESLR), which Costa prides itself on using and implementing, it can successfully teach students. The points expressed in the ESLR are all extremely effective goals teachers should be basing
Teachers who are concerned with the test grades and academic performance of their classes rather than how the students will choose to apply the philosophies taught in the class aren’t properly teaching students. Granted, the division between these two methods of education can’t
simply be viewed in the context of “black-and-white”
Costa prioritizes the standards presented in the ESLR as the basis in which all teachers should plan their lessons around. The points referred to, such as critical thinking and methods of communication, are quintessential facets which are found in many of these teachers’ approaches to lecturing and allow students to fully grasp the concepts which they’re being taught.
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