Professor Sharon

100 Day Project – Day 36 – 9:55   (This is yesterday’s posting.)

This afternoon on a walk with my five-year-old granddaughter, we stopped to admire a few ants — we were already carrying a Wooly Bear caterpillar in a jar with us (doesn’t everyone know that even caterpillars need afternoon exercise?) — and she informed me that she was learning about bugs in school and knew what regurgitate means.   She explained in excellent detail.

It was an interesting conversation to me as it related perfectly to a subject I covered earlier in class with my first-year students.  Reviewing Bloom’s Taxonomy and asking them, in small groups, to apply it to a task they had to learn is always interesting.  We then talk about decision making and it’s relationship to Bloom’s and this is where it gets interesting to me.   These first year students did not know what regurgitate meant when I used the word to mean “recall” in discussing the taxonomy.  I’m always flabbergasted each year by what knowledge is not there for young students.  This really took me aback.   There are so many facets to education, that it’s difficult to even state that there’s something wrong with the system, that’s obvious I think to all of us.  Exactly what it is, I work on figuring it out with others in the system.  For now let’s not regurgitate old mistakes – let’s fix the obvious disparity.  Today I am thinking about regurgitate.