Help YOURSELF!

As I read the article, Rigor Redefined, by Tony Wagner, I actually started to understand what my English teacher has been trying to tell me this whole time. I thought that when she was explaining that we have to learn how to think for ourselves and ask good questions, that I knew what she meant. I didn’t fully understand, though… until now. I think the fact that this article explained those things with examples helped a lot.
Tony Wagner did observations in classrooms. To sum it up, most of the kids didn’t seem too concerned about their learning. A group of three boys in a science lab class did an experiment, along with their classmates. Their concoction started to smoke. When asked by Wagner what they thought went wrong, they just shrugged, and said, “I dunno.” they waited for their teachers’ assistance. They were waiting to be rescued.
As a high- schooler, I know that tests really count toward your grade, even if you get 100% on all of your other assignments. But, how can we get good grades on tests if we don’t know where we went wrong. I believe we must know what went wrong, because that’s what matters! I know that it sounds obvious, but you must understand, that unless if you question what went wrong, and don’t just correct your work, that you will never truly understand.
You cannot just correct your tests. Make sure you know what you did wrong. I am shocked to realize, that right now, I sound like a teacher! “Make sure that if you don’t understand, get help!” We hear that phrase over and over again, don’t we? I am disappointed in myself to realize that I don’t very often do that. If I correct my tests, usually just leave them untouched, and never look back on them. If I started to correct, and go over them, then I would probably understand it more. Even if it’s the end of that unit, and we aren’t coming back to it, there’s still finals! I would probably fail that section of my final if I didn’t understand it the last time we studied it. I could probably cut my studying time in half if I asked good questions. Because, really, if your questions are answered, you will accept the answer better than just reading it from a textbook, or hearing it indirectly from a teacher.
Also, if you are a teacher reading this blog, thank you, at least someone out there is reading it! Also, the main point is we learn better if we have to think to get the answer. It helps if you answer our question with a question… but a helpful question, of course! One such as, “Have you considered…” or, “why do you think that?” or, “What does your partner think?” We pay more attention to the answer that way, instead of stashing it away in our notes that, lets face it, will probably never be looked at again.
So, as hard as it is sometimes to get up my nerves to ask a question that may seem obvious to the whole class, it will ultimately probably end up getting me a better grade than them.