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Angela DiGioia's picture

I was surprised...

Power Teaching was surprisingly off-putting to me.  Although I didn't feel quite as strongly as Jessica, I did feel that the tone that the teachers used with the students was patronizing and did nothing to foster co-constructive inquiry in a classroom.  After thinking about it more, I would say that I would prefer to be taught in a purely didactic style than a purely power teaching style (it is the lesser of the two evils).  Additionally, I don't think that it's realistic to think that every teacher would be well suited for the cheerleader-style teaching of power teaching, and nor would they want to be.  Although it is important to engage students in the classroom, the chaos that was apparent in the videos that we viewed would be enough to derail the activities in a normal sized classroom of more than 10-15 students. Power teaching seems like an interesting model where you learn by doing (which I strongly favor), however, there must be some balance with note taking, theory, and practice and not just a room full of students clapping, yelling, and mimicking their teacher.  Here, the voice of the students is not heard and learning is self-guided. There was no room for questions nor a format to ask them amidst all of the clapping and patronizing done by the teacher.  This model is counter productive in fostering creativity and co-constructive dialogue in the classroom and, I would say, is a step backwards from the didactic model that we seem to criticize so often for the same reasons.

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