Analysis of Article "Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say" by Steven C. Reinhart

What is the most effective way to teach? Can students really learn and fully understand the material teachers convey to them on a day to day basis? According to a middle school mathematics teacher, his methods of teaching the traditional way was not as effective and producing a long-term impact as he would have liked. The article "Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say!" enriches us to the possibility of applying slight gradual modifications to our teaching methods and how we could find ways to utilize that information in the search for more effective teaching methods to encourage students to explain their thinking and become more deeply involved in the classroom discussions, thus developing their questioning skills (Reinhart, 2000). After analyzing his research, I can say as an aspiring Mathematics teacher myself, there are some positive aspects to his newfound teaching methods, as well as some questions of concern that I have pertaining the longevity of this approach to teaching.

As a middle school math teacher in Chippewa Falls, WI, Steven Reinhart often found that even his extensive planning and detailed lessons yielded less than high achievements from his students. He wanted to know why, that no matter how perfect his lessons were, his students’ level of achievement was so low. It even caused him to question his own methods of teaching. So Reinhart developed an idea to commit to gradually changing his ways of teaching by 10% each year. With the goal of simply teaching a single topic in a better way than the previous year, he “collected and used materials and ideas gathered from supplements, workshops, professional journals, and university classes” to achieve this goal (Reinhart, 2000).

The major flaw he noticed when he was in ...

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...t approach is only focusing on a single topic each year and I do not see how that would be productive and effective over the time span of a year. We have to cover over a number of materials and if we dwell on one for the whole year, what would our students be ultimately learning? I feel like I would find solace in my classroom by incorporating the student-based teaching method but I would also find interesting ways for their comprehensive skills to improve using the more traditional teacher-based methods.

I agree with his position on teaching effectively using this method and while he notes that it is impractical and nearly impossible to incorporate everything he suggested at all times, the ideas he presented lends perspective and as a future teacher, anything that will help me develop more as a teacher is something I hope I can do throughout my teaching career.