Hands to mouths

By Frances Haman-Prewitt

Kids used to get in trouble for talking in class.

Not so if one’s teacher is Erica Schmidt. Schmidt’s math students at Tyner Middle Academy can frequently be found talking to their neighbors—though there’s no time for idle gossip.

“I set up mathematical dyads (pairs of students),” Schmidt says. “Partner A explains what he or she thinks the answer is, while partner B listens. Then they’ll switch. This helps both students. The one who is talking must be able to explain his position, which deepens his understanding of that position. The one who’s listening has a broader experience by being exposed to another way of thinking about the problem.” Sometimes Schmidt will ask the listening partner to explain to her what the first partner said. “To do that they have to listen very carefully, which is a valuable skill for them to learn,” she says.

Schmidt offers challenging assignments that make her students think hard about their answers. Her class hums with activity, and every student is involved and deeply engaged in discussion—about math.

There’s a similar buzz in Dianne Kelehear’s anatomy and physiology class at Ooltewah High. When we visited late last spring, every student in the class seemed to echo the same sentiment: “It’s really hard—I love it.”

Kelehear knows her class is difficult. “This is really college-level work,” she says, “though they don’t get college credit for it.” But she uses several strategies to keep her students engaged and learning at a high level. For one thing, the class is very hands-on. Students dissect animals that have a muscular structure similar to that of humans. On the day we visited, they were drawing human muscles on construction paper and pasting them onto one another to get a better understanding of just how muscles work.

Kelehear also offers several ways for students to approach their lessons, including flash cards, charts or some other method that helps.

Kelehear’s class requires a lot of memorization, but both teacher and students agree that the hard thinking and hands-on application that she uses in class help students go beyond memorization and really learn the material, and learn it in a way that will stay with them throughout their lives.

To visit both of these classrooms, visit PEFChattanooga.org/ExcellentTeachers.

 convey the concept to an individual student.  “Everyone has a different way of learning,” she explains. “I encourage them to find the method that works best for them, that will help them not only in this class, but when they get to college and do more studying on their own.”