FOCUS: SKILL OR CONTENT?
As teachers, what do we really want our students to remember and find useful? We want to impart to them knowledge from books and other materials, but we also want them to develop skills that they can use long after they have forgotten what they have learned in school.
So what should we focus on: skills or content? What should we cover, and how indepth should it be?
When we make a decision as to what to teach, we sometimes wonder what our colleagues think of us when making a certain call. Did we make an adequate decision? Or a lacking one?
Sometimes, our mistake is trying to cover everything, which is not humanly possible. Different teachers have to make choices as to where they are most likely to engage their students.
It’s actually not whether you should teach about something, but how much emphasis you should put on it.
As educators, we must emphasize relatable content – one that would be useful for students down the road, years from now. We should capitalize on content that students will find most interesting, and how and why a particular topic would still matter one day. We should also bear in mind that students now can easily get information on people and events through the internet.
Apart from relatable content, we must also emphasize relevant skills like writing in journalistic form rather than formal academic writing. Introducing relatable content actually helps reinforce students’key skills.
There should also be an agreement on skills that should be taught – not so much as to the content delivered. While it is important for students to gain an understanding of key events which happened in their home country – like the People Power Revolution – but it’s not the content that should matter, but how such content can engage students in understanding historical inquiry.
There should be a balance on how to make content relevant to refining lifelong skills— no matter the subject taught – which is actually challenging for teachers.
— oOo— The author is Teacher III at Dolores Elementary School