In Mike Wesch's ted talk, he argues the way students learn best is by their own drive and what inspires them. If in the classroom there is a disconnect with the student and teacher, finding the inspiration will be really difficult. Around minute 4:25 he defines what he believes real learning is. "Real learning is not about memorizing the answers to this class. The real learning is the questions that you take out of the classroom. The questions that inspire you, that take you all over the world and drive you." This pulls away from an idea where you "learn" it, take the test, and forget it. For some learners, this is the end all be all but in order for it to be meaningful teachers should make the connections with their students, get to know them, and help guide students to understand who they are.
Wesch also talks about the ignored questions students that drive students, who they are, what they will do, and if they will make it. Wesch shows a drawing of students on a mountain and the process it takes to make it up there. The bottom shows the student who is labeled as "not yet" meaning they didn't make it to the part of the learning where they ask questions that inspire them...yet. Wesch continues on and talks about what he started to do with some of his students having lunches with them and learning about what their interests are. He thought by doing this he could use their interests to lead them back to his class or he could help them expand on their passions.
Going back to the mountain, the "not yet" also reminds me of the multiple math courses I took during my undergrad. The month of August would be overflowing with people and by the first week of November, less than ten would be left. (I am sure there were multiple reasons for this but from what I remembered most were grade related). I wondered what those professors thought about that and if there was a way the "not yets" could have had a chance to stay in the class to make it up the mountain. For many, the threat or fear of failing would turn them away before they could really make any self-improvement. What could the professor have done to spark their interest to stay? Some of these courses lack the personal connection we were just a number on the list. Not all of my math courses were like this just but a handful of ignored not yets sprinkled though out. Calculus was probably the hardest and proudest class I took. I had a small group of friends and we were all failing (miserably), we attended every class, did every assignment but we just were not cutting it. Professor wasn't sure what to do but asked us to break into groups a few times a week after the main lecture. We work together to fill in the gaps we were missing. Luckily, we each had a piece of the puzzle to help conquer the calc monster. We went into our final still thinking we were going to fail but we crushed it (in a good way of course...but barely 😅).
My favorite part of Wesch's talk is when he uses his son's drive as an example of any student's drive to keep going. Baby George would fall off the step, laugh, and get back up, there was no penalty for falling he knew he had the time and space to conquer the step. Calculus was my step although it was not as fun as George's journey it was still rewarding, I continued taking math courses and now I teach 6th-grade math. My approach to teaching math to my students is by making real-world connections or connections that my student would appreciate making them be apart of learning through class discussion and a mix of group work. I want to give my students the time and space to conquer their learning together.
