Third Dispositional Blog: AUTHENTICITY

How do you know where your limits are for expressing authenticity?  How can students tell if a teacher is not authentic?  What are the ramifications for learning if a teacher is seen as a 'fake' or not authentic with students?

Teachers who are fake - who try to 'wing' it - are the worst.  That's one of my pet peeves about certain  teachers - those who know that what they are teaching the student does not matter, and yet try to spin this creative, inspiring tale of how their material will change our lives.  It won't change our lives...unless we're learning first aid in health class. 

Students should be able to ask the question, "Why are we learning this? How is this going to better help my life?" and get a legit answer.  I remember several times when I was making my way through secondary education in which classmates would ask such questions; and instead of getting a worthy response - or even an attempt to explain why or how - the students were told just to be quiet and do their work.  How is this encouraging the student?  How is this motivating?  Who hears the response, "dont worry about it...just do your homework" and wants to do their work?  No one.

I feel like a lot of times in these blogs I make my former teachers seem like the bad guys.  They're not really; i just feel like some of them could have tried harder in trying to motivate me in doing my homework.  The response of 'do your work' or 'this will help you in the future because you'll learn that not everything you have to do is something you'll like' simply does not work. 

Students, I believe, want to know the answers to questions concerning how today's homework will make tomorrow's task easier.  Daniel Pink discusses this problem in his book Drive.  He said that when giving teachers are giving homework to their students, they must do so in a way where the students have both autonomy and purpose.  He even listed off a checklist for the teachers; they are suppose to ask themselves these questions before handing out assignments:

• Am I offering students any autonomy over how and when to do this work?
• Does this assignment promote mastery by offering a novel, engaging task (as opposed to rote reformulation of something already covered in class)
• Do my students understand the purpose of this assignment?  That is, can they see how doing this addtional activity at home contributes to the larger enterprise in wich the calss is engaged?

The homework must have purpose; teachers must be able to answer how this is relevant, how this will help down the road.  If they cannot answer those things, something must be changed.  And that doesnt mean spin off some fantasy tale about how this would help in the future - that means changing the lesson plan.  Students can detect spun fables of hopeless purpose like sharks can detect blood in water.  And when they sense a lie, they don't want to do the homework.  They start to think the teacher is fake.  And students hate teachers who are fake.