Hello Reader,
Today I will talk about the term rigor in classrooms. In the article “Rigor Is More Than Hard Work,” I agree with the idea that rigor in education is “creating an environment in which each student is expected to learn at high levels, each student is supported so he or she can learn at high levels, and each student demonstrates learning at high levels.” I agree with this definition because it defines rigor with an equitable lens. Thinking about my own education in high school, I would say that some of my classes had rigor. I went to Disney II Magnet high school in Chicago and one class that had the appropriate level of rigor was my AP Language and composition class. In this class, we would practice writing essays within 45 minutes to prepare us for the AP exam. We would also work on how to annotate and find important details about the text. I remember the teacher would provide us with written notes, helpful guides for writing certain types of essays. He also showed us how to critique and give helpful feedback to one another. In terms of homework he gave us essays to work on, college board online AP MCQ problems and other reading. To me this class was one of the first classes where I felt challenged. Personally, for me English has always been one of the only subjects that I struggle with. When I was taking this class, it was when covid-19 caused schools to go all online in March. Even with this big change of going online my AP Language and composition teacher still managed to support us. I am thankful for the amount of rigor that the teacher provided because after taking his class I felt like my writing abilities improved. Have you had any class in high school that had too much rigor or too little rigor or a balanced amount of rigor?
Recently I watched a Ted Talk called “Vigor not rigor: schools should be dream‑driven, not data‑driven.” This reminded me about the article “Rigor Is More Than Hard Work,” because both the speaker and the author are challenging the traditional idea of “rigor.” One key difference is that the speaker in the ted talk makes the argument that schools should focus on “vigor,” where students should be energetic, motivated and engaged in learning. Both sources agree that giving students more problems are generally not good because it does not guarantee deeper thinking. From both the ted talk video and the article, I learned that as a future teacher I should give my students meaningful problems that require them to explain their reasoning, create connections, and apply math to real life situations.
Thank you for reading.
Have a great day!
I really liked your connection between rigor and support. Your AP Language class is a good example because it sounds like the work was challenging, but your teacher also gave you guides, feedback, and practice instead of just expecting you to figure everything out on your own. I also agree with your point that more work does not always mean more rigor. Giving students meaningful problems where they have to explain their thinking and make connections seems much more valuable than just increasing the amount of work. As a future teacher, I think finding that balance between challenge and support will be really important.
ReplyDeleteYou made a great point that rigor isn't about giving students more work, but about making sure they understand something while also being challenged. I think that is something that can be easy to forget because a class can have a lot of difficult assignments without actually helping students learn. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned how your teacher was still able to maintain rigor even when everything moved online during COVID. I feel like that was probably one of the hardest times for teachers to balance challenging students while also understanding that everyone was adjusting to a completely different way of learning. My mom is a teacher, and she said teaching through a screen almost felt pointless, and the students would have benefited the same amount if they didn't even have class.
ReplyDeleteI felt like your post was so relatable to not only us that took AP courses in high school but also those of us that are observing these AP/IB classes at CPS and see the prioritization in test-taking skills. Like we did, students are taught to think fast and to write these deeply theoretical essays in less than an hour in order to do good in their AP exams. To me, it seems very out of touch.
ReplyDeleteI think that students in these advanced classes are taught everything so fast and do not have time to fully process what they actually think about the subject or if their opinion even matters.
Maybe it is just me thinking so badly about standardized tests at any age or level of learning.
I really like your ambition of giving students meaningful problems that matter to them, that they can critically think and form an opinion that is not influenced by someones idea of a "right answer"