Student Oriented Curriculum

The Student Oriented Curriculum Presentation brought up subjects that I feel very strongly about. I voiced my concern in class about teachers getting carried away with this seemingly new form of pedagogy. For me I think that the best way to approach pedagogy is with a healthy mix of "old school" and new, cutting-edge ideas. In any instance, when the pendulum swings too far one way it never works out well. I am more than willing to give students the chance to choose what they learn but the fact of the matter is that there is a teacher in the classroom for a reason. Teachers are not coaches or mere advisers. We have a job and a responsibility to teach students information that they might not necessarily choose to learn. I mean who WANTS to learn the difference between an Introductory Phase or an Introductory Clause? I don't know many students who would choose to wade through a class of grammatical specifications; however, these are things that they must learn to get to the fun stuff!

I didn't really find the ideas in this book a "fresh" take on classroom management or curriculum design ideas. I feel like this is a theory that gets thrown around a lot. I think that it was nice that it showed the story of the theory actually in practice though.

I did have a hard time actually figuring out how the book was organized. Perhaps this was because of the jigsaw or it could be that the book was organized in a disjointed manner OR it could have just been me.