November 10th, 2011

John Hunter

This blog goes back to Friday, November 4th's class. I apologize for the late entry, this past week has been crazy. I worked everyday from Friday to Tuesday, and had a final exam on Tuesday afternoon. But enough about that.. let's talk about Mr. John Hunter!


So in Friday's class we watched a recording online from a conference called a TED Talk ("TED" stands for "Technology, Entertainment and Design"). The man speaking's name was John Hunter, a public school teacher from Virginia who had created something called the "World Peace Game" for his grade 4 class. Below is a picture of some students playing the game, which consists of unnamed countries (the students pick their countries and assign them names).. for each country there is an executive (president, vice president, etc.). With the game comes a workbook which contains 50 crisis' that the students must work through. 

Here is a video of John Hunter explaining the game (I imagine his explanation is better than mine):

"The World Peace Game is about learning to live and work comfortably in the unknown."

- John Hunter
In the video, Hunter claimed his 4th graders "solved global warming in 2 weeks". That is amazing considering how long it has been going on in real life, and the fact that trained scientists are still looking for ways to slow down the effects.. that's right, not SOLVE the problem, just SLOW DOWN the effects. Maybe they should get some advice from these 4th graders!

Later in class,Dr. Nellis, our professor, gave us an invitational statement, he said: "share your thoughts on adopting student centered work (such as the World Peace Game) in your classroom."My reply-- I love the fact that Mr. Hunter is allowing his students the freedom to make their own decisions and learn from them. I agree with him that students will learn more if they are allowed to discover things for themselves. However, I do feel that an activity which gives the students too much freedom can go bad very quickly, and leave the teacher with no authority in the classroom because the students may feel like they are the bosses. I believe, like most things in life, there needs to be a balance in the classroom between the students and the teacher. Dr. Nellis also gave us a "provocation" statement which read: "umm... in case you didn't know, building world peace is beyond the curriculum outcomes of the K-12 classroom!"My reply-- I dislike the fact that someone is allowed to dictate what students should and should not learn in school.. yes, there should be a minimum requirement, but a maximum? I believe that students should be allowed to soar as high as is attainable for them, and to have someone saying "that is not within the curriculum".. really?! I'm sorry, but in my opinion that is just wrong. 


Thank you for your time, and peace :)Sincerely,Natasha.


p.s. this blog is almost at its end... the last blog will be November 18th, so sad it's ending, but I would like to thank Dr. Nellis for allowing us, the students, this learning experience.