November 20th was the Great American Teach-In. The day was filled with volunteers who came into our classrooms to take to our students about their jobs. Before allowing visitors to come into our classroom, we had to prepare our students for the visitors. As teachers, it is important to know who is going to come into the classroom and the purpose of their visit. Since The Great American Teach-In is an informal learning experience, which is defined as a "voluntary learning that takes place outside the traditional classroom environment" (Melber, 2000), it is important that the teachers have a purpose for the visitor and an objective to cover. In the article Tap Into Informal Learning, Melber explains that teachers should "plan logistically and allow you to identify objects, displays, or themes that specifically match your curricular goals" (2000). When the teacher has set up curricular goals with the visitor that align with the objectives of the class, the students are able to learn a lesson while having the fun experience of a visitor in the classroom. One visitor we had displayed the ability to have an objective for the teach-in and make it meaningful for students. The visitor was a hairdresser and she related her work to students. She showed the students some of the tools she uses while she does hair and related her tools to the tools that students used. One tool she had was a brush to dye hair. She drew a parallel to a student's paintbrush. She made more connections for the students like a her head mannequin as what she used to practice her skills, just as students do classwork to practice their skill. I thought that this was an awesome way to make connections to the students. She also emphasized going to school and the classes she had to take, just like the students have to take classes and work hard in school.
Another topic that is mentioned in Melber's article is concentrating on "depth rather than breadth" (2000). It is more beneficial for students to go into depth with a few topics rather than trying to cover a wide range of topics. This enables students have "an in-depth learning experience" (Melber, 2000). They are able to dive deep into content for very few topics, allowing them to learn a lot about those topics, really having the chance to better understand the topic. One of our visitors was able to display this concept quite well. This visitor was a choreographer who owned her own dance studio. She told our students about her life and how she loved to dance. She briefly mentioned the different types of dance that she was involved in, but she focused on her favorite, and something that the students could relate to, hip-hop. Instead of showing a lot of moves from the different types of dance, she taught our students some moves from hip-hop. They were able to get a better understanding of hip-hop while having fun and learning some dance moves.
Overall, The Great American Teach-In was an awesome experience for my students. They were able to learn a lot and fun while doing it.