"Book Reviews" by Sylvia Dresser |
by Rob Schader What is it that makes for a good education? Is it the amount of material covered in a semester or a year time? Is it the knowledge your students get out of the subject you are teaching them? If you believe the above are valid then how do we achieve these goals? I am a second year teacher and I have been battling these questions for the past two years. My first year of teaching physics at Saint Patrick High School was the most horrific experience ever. Everything and anything that could have gone wrong did. I had no classroom to start the year, the bookstore ran out of the book for the students, and I was teaching a subject I was unsure of. I hated waking up in the morning and driving to work. The weekends could not come fast enough for me. I started blaming others for all of my problems and bringing everyone close to me down. I hated what I was doing and needed a change. I decided it was time to test the waters in other subject areas. My wife is a physical education teacher and has been trained in adventure challenge education pedagogy and told me about the adventure education classes offered at Northeastern. She told me about the different activities and how they related to her personal life and her life as a teacher. I thought I would give them a try. The summer of 2002 was a major turning point in my life. I started to feel my life literally changing class by class. I started caring about the people all around me. I took the time to stop and get to know others. I saw myself changing as a result of the adventure sequence classes not only as a person, but as a teacher also. In class, we had to look past our first impressions and visual judgments of everyone and get to know each other on a personal level. We played team building games which brought us closer together as a group. We had to go through a trust sequence to gain each others trust and respect. We had to trust others to insure our safety as we climbed the rock wall. We had to work together to make it through a 3 day trip together. This sequence of events made an impact on my life forever as a person, as well as a teacher.
I came back to school fired up to teach my classes. I had new thoughts on teaching and new thoughts on how I wanted my classes run. I got away from speeding through information and took time to get to know my students. I took what I learned from the adventure education sequences and applied it to my everyday classroom in physics. Not only did it work for them, but it also worked for me. We were able to take concepts and theories in physics and apply them through adventure activities. I started duct taping kids to walls and dropping eggs out of windows. I used these activities to talk about forces, vectors, and gravity. Not only were we having a great time, but we were learning at the same time. The whole school was talking about what we were doing. They couldn't believe what was happening. Test scores increased, kids wanted to come to class, and we had a blast! I wanted to be there everyday and so did they. The process changed me and who I was as a teacher. I am a believer in the adventure education experience and I think it needs to be incorporated in our students' everyday learning. I use adventure activities to get students to learn material all the time. They not only learn material this way, but get a lesson in life as well. Way too often we underestimate students of today. I hear it everyday in the way they talk. Every time we do an adventure activity someone asks me to explain the right answer. They are taught from day one that there is always a right answer or one perfect way of doing things. This is not how the real world works and the classroom should be no exception. We need to get our students to start thinking for themselves and realizing there is no one perfect answer. I strongly believe we need to bring the adventure challenge education process into the traditional classroom. I see what it has done for my classes in the last 8 weeks I have incorporated it and it is amazing. The students want to come to class, they enjoy the time we share together, and they are excited about physics. I love waking up in the morning and taking on each new adventure as we travel our journey together. I wish this would have been part of my college teacher training preparation. I think every teacher should go through the sequence. Not only will it help them become a better person, but they will become a better teacher. Adventure education is about putting passion into action in any content area, not just in the gym, and isn't that what teaching is all about: passion. --Rob
Schader
"It took us one week to build this thing," Jose Martinez said, "and only seven seconds to sink it." Martinez, a St. Pat senior, was referring to a boat he and a team of three other seniors made solely out of cardboard and duct tape. Mr. Rob Schader presented his physics students with the challenge of turning fifty square-feet of cardboard and one roll of duct tape into a functional boat, fit to make laps around the St. Patrick High School swimming pool. "The students need to design boats that will have a wide enough base to displace the proper amount of water depending on the weight of the boat's captain and how heavy the boat is," said Schader. "Beyond that, the kids want to have the fastest boat, as they need to race their boats from one end of the pool to the other and back." This is not the first time Schader's physics classes have created an uproar amongst the student body this year. Earlier in the year, Schader's students tested the power of the force of gravity, attempting to see if duct tape could suspend a person in midair. "Both projects not
only taught the students lessons in physics and science, but also the importance
of working as a team," said Schader.
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