One step forward, three steps back...
Okay, so today in class today, before the bell rang I overheard some students talking. They were genuinely upset and confused. I asked them if everything was okay because they seemed pretty worked up. One of the students proceeded to tell me that he doesn't know what is going on in his classes, but he is all confused and frustrated. He continued to express his concern with how he didn't feel like he knew what was going on in class and what he was suppose to do/learn/know. His last comment struck me. He said, "I don't know why my teacher just changed his way of teaching. He just stopped explaining things to us, it is extremely frustrating and confusing."
Whoa, I thought, this isn't the feedback I/we want. I think that constructivism is an awesome methodology, but we can't make the change too drastic and not explain things to students as far as expectations and goals. Also I don't think that constructivism is complete discovery learning without explination/clarification of the content from teachers.
However, then I thought, thinking can be confusing and frustrating. And isn't that exactly what we want students to learn how to do? To have the logic, and criticial thinking skills to muddle through information and realize the logic, truth, and meaning behind it?
I don't know, I just think we do need to be careful about the students and how I have heard some of them percieving some of these changes. Again, just making sure that our expectations are clear to them. Because as we've seen on our blogs and the fischbowl thinking is often confusing, messy and frustrating right?!