The role of the teacher should be innovation in the classroom

Teachers should have the ability to experiment how their class operates.

Everyday is the same as yesterday in high school, not just mine, but every high school. Everyday we learn the same way, teachers do the same routines, and follow the same test driven curriculum. Those routines consist of the standard, mediocre teaching methods such as worksheets, powerpoints, and lecturing. All of them have a few things in common, they do not motivate a student to learn, don't inspire most students to ask questions and will put the occasional student to sleep.

This is a problem, a big problem. We're destroying education in the name of tests and “common core”. Teachers are forced to use these ludicrous practices everyday and in some cases spoon feed us what the answer on our final exams will be because there grades are based on ours. Teachers are observed on occasion by administration, who only want to see the policies they imposed being used. In the end, this falls down on us, the students. The lack of change and innovation allowed by the teachers degrades our quality of education and ultimately requires more work & studying on our end to do well.

Let’s pretend for a minute teachers had the ability to innovate, create change, and make sure we understand a topic rather than the test answer. What would school be like? I already know from experience what school under these conditions would look like, so let me share the experience.

It’s 6th grade, due to complications with the teacher in 5th grade I've been put into one of the worst classes possible and the administration would not transfer me out. To make matters worse, instead of having a computer class like I actually wanted we were stuck with a very boring looking music class that involved the theory rather than playing. What I didn't know was we were being placed into an experimental class and I'm glad we were. My peers for the most part misbehaved every moment they could except for our music class. In fact, I remember days they were even looking forward for that period of the day because of how much fun it was. Why was it so fun? The teacher had the ability to innovate how he taught the material, and instead of boring note taking we actually made music on the computer with a very interesting program. It was fun to learn with this innovative technique, which is why we looked forward to it. Furthermore, since the teacher loved doing it and we loved doing it, I would call this a success.

I can only imagine what school would be like if teachers got to innovate how they taught. Kids looking forward to school every day, and actually understanding the material not just test answers. Students would have fun, get inspired to learn more, ask questions and most importantly actually get educated. Sadly, the reality is the people who run education in the United States aren't big on change and the reason school is structured this way is because were completely test driven. Regents exams, whatever it is in your state has a higher priority than actual education. You want a world full of talented and educated professionals who came from your school? Fix our fundamentally broken classroom experience.