Week 12 – Paradigm Shift

To begin, I watched this amazing TED talk twice because it was filled with so much useful information that I agree with 100%. This TED talk has to do with teaching mathematics because math is one of those subjects that is ‘it’s either right or wrong’ and never ‘interesting view’ or ‘how did you come up with that?’. We need to evolve from right or wrong answers and teach a student to think above, beyond, and creativity. The Common Core Standards fit with what Sir Ken Robinson was talking about because they are outdated and tend to only help those students who are ‘intelligent’. There are other ways for students to achieve success without the use of rules and outdated forms of learning. The TED talk mentions that this is not the teachers’ fault, but rather this just goes way back in time when the rules were set into place. Teachers can change the paradigm by being more diverse with their students. As I stated before, there should not be a correct or incorrect answer because we all learn in different ways. We as educators need to reform the system to think creatively. Students should be working in groups and exploring other ways of thinking/learning. What stood out to me the most from this speech was that there are unnecessary rules in education. I wonder why we generalize and group students? Don’t we want to help them become creative and civil individuals for our future?