I not-so-secretly love this textbook. That is something very hard for me to say. I LOVE that Jago has decided to really PUSH her students. She injects a little bit of humor into her writing when she says, "My sophomore students read a total of twenty books. Do students struggle to keep up? Of course they do! We are not working in the Zone of Minimal Effort." This is TOTALLY something I want to keep in mind as a future teacher!!! I loved her lists of books and her outside class reading assignments.
I feel that if I would have had Jago as a teacher I would have really disliked her in the beginning but at the end of the year I would have loved her. I would have thought, "Wow, I had a teacher who expected me to act like an adult and really pushed me. I learned so much more in her classroom than I would have learned in another."
I also really liked that she wanted to see if she could get a program in place where the students track their reading over the 4 years at high school. I feel that would have a tremendous impact on students so that way when they graduated, they would be able to see how much they did learn and maybe revisit some of the things they may have forgotten about later on in life.
While perusing Youtube, I found this little video of Carol Jago talking about papers.
I also really liked that Jago pushed her students. I think many times teachers let students off the hook or maybe ease the load to keep their own work load down. But both of these things are wrong. Learning takes effort on both the part of the student and the teacher. I really think I also would have hated her and the work until the end when I took another look at that list of books read and saw what I had accomplished.
ReplyDeleteBe treated like an adult is something we do not normally see in high schools. To be given a lot of work can be frustrating, but at the same time, you know your teacher thinks you can handle it. By doing this, I think she is giving them some independence to do their work on their own terms, but get it done!
ReplyDeleteGlad you like this book! Thanks for the video!
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