Oliphant....Oliphant...why did I know that name?
Oliphant appeared in the "Passage" portion of the "CBS Sunday Morning" show, where they memorialize important and famous people who died the previous week.
Was it eighth grade, or ninth? I was fortunate to be in a DoDDS school in Germany those years, with amazing teachers and daily access to "The Stars & Stripes" newspaper. One of those teachers had us combing the paper each evening for political cartoons by Pat Oliphant and op-ed columns by William F. Buckley, Jr and William Safire. If any of those pieces were present, we were expected to read and respond to them in our notebooks and be prepared to discuss them the next day. We were also required to cut out news articles from at least three different continents a week and glue them into our notebooks.
Since the news was constantly changing, and Oliphant, Buckley and Safire were not daily contributors, these lessons could not be planned. The discussions were not "gotcha" exercises; curiosity about the topics and well-thought-out questioning was encouraged. As a seasoned educator, I can look back and admire those assignments as relevant and timely critical thinking lessons. I feel like I knew a lot more about world events back then, and at a greater depth.
Did we still cover the curriculum? I'm sure we did. I'm also sure that it wasn't as jam-packed as today's scope and sequence, and it certainly wasn't scripted. Those highly trained teachers were trusted to do what they were trained to do, with their own creative tweaks--like tuning adolescents into the pulse of the world by reading the newspaper each night. I am grateful for the education I received under their care.
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| William F. Buckley, Jr, courtesy of PBS |
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| Cartoon by Oliphant, June 1973 |
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| William Safire, courtesy of Simon & Schuster |
That sounds like the best kind of lessons! By the time I retired in 2022, I missed the freedom I had to plan lessons that I wanted to do….
ReplyDeleteIf only we could go back to the kind of teaching where teachers were trusted to teach as they saw fit and yet still cover all that was needed to be covered in the course of the school year. Arjeha
ReplyDeleteYou have touched on a topic I think about often. I was fortunate to attend a very progressive high school in Missouri back in the 1970s. I’ve actually talked to one of my ELA teachers about that time and how lucky we were. I also had a lot of freedom in my career, freedom I know many in my district did not have. For a number of years I was the coordinator for the district speech teachers at a time the state mandated were not well defined. I also flat out refused to teach to the test in my English classes, and that meant eschewing g bell ringers. I often brought material into class the morning I discovered it, and the kids knew we were reading and thinking together about new material. I have free rein in my AP lit classes. A so hate how scripted and devoid of spontaneity and. relativity much of education has become.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly I can see how this type of real world teaching connects to the knowledge building we are reminded is so important now, but so much more authentic in your example.
ReplyDeleteIn truth, I did not like the "current events" activities we had in school, where I had to choose a newspaper article and write a summary of it. There was very little discussion. I think talking about things would have been great!
ReplyDeleteAnd I also lament that we are no longer in a time when "teachers (are) trusted to do what they were trained to do."
What a thoughtful piece you have shared here.