What is really left of what we teach?

When I was a teacher I was always interested in the question of which of all the things I teach remain in the memory of the students at the end of the lesson. I did not pretend to check their long-term memory (it was clear to me that long-term memory depends on data that is attached to strong emotions. Unfortunately, strong emotions are not really an integral part of high school history lessons),

I was so curious to know what of all the information I pass on to my students does penetrate the skull. . I was afraid that most of them do not listen to me at all and only respond to my inquiries in a pavlovian way . In fact I was afraid that all my teaching craft was worthless and nothing was left of it.

The accepted format of traditional learning assumes that the teacher teaches a certain content, the students ask questions that are answered by the content expert (the teacher, of course) and at the end of the lesson the teacher summarizes the material and gives his students homework, which are mainly to memorize the information distributed in the lesson in order to make sure that the students will remember as much as possible until the next lesson or exam. But, this method, could not help me to find out what my students really understand and remember at the end of the lesson. After all, they had a lot of methods to complete the content they missed in class or to prepare directly for a particular exam. But what did they really experience, hear and understand during the lesson itself?

At first, I made a small change in the traditional format - instead of summarizing the lesson I asked the students to summarize it in the last five minutes of the lesson.

It was a shaky and unbearable experience. Sweepingly, the students did not agree to volunteer to summarize the lesson. Most of those I forced to do so mumbled shyly, or composed all sorts of random words that they did manage to remember or worse- invented imaginary stories about a lesson that did not exist.

Could it be that I spend hours upon hours of talking, Showing videos, pictures, delivering active learning exercises and in fact none of that is left in the memory of the young minds before me?

It was hard for me to deal with the horrible findings so I decided to upgrade the little experiment at the end of each lesson. At the beginning of the lesson I asked my students to write down in one paragraph, at most, the most important thing they understood during the lesson. At the end of the lesson I randomly asked a number of students to read the paragraph they had written.

There was indeed some improvement. Some students read interesting and even innovative insights, few students volunteered to read their paragraph. But still, I felt, that this model only works with students who have a high level of concentration and analytical ability. I highly doubted if anything from what they had written actually remained in their memory a few minutes after class. Indeed, when I asked some students to repeat a paragraph they had written in the next lesson, they looked at me with vague eyes and asked, "Teacher, which paragraph are you talking about?".

Infused with a belief in the chance to improve my students' memory status and rehabilitate my ego as a teacher, I upgraded my little experiment again. Instead of asking students to write down one paragraph that would summarize the most important component they learned in class, I prepared for them what I later called an "emotional reflection page."

The "Emotional Reflection" assignment required the students to indicate different emotions that arose in them during the lesson in the context of the things they learned. What made them angry? What surprised them? What bored them? What annoyed them? What interested them?

The results indicated an endearing change in the level of memory and involvement of my students. Almost all the students in the class expressed a desire to express the feelings that arose in them during the lesson,

?The explanations for the feelings that came up were amusing, surprising and thought-provoking. In the following lessons the students themselves asked me to learn things that were more surprising, or funny, or controversial. And at the end of the year all students were presented with an emotional map of their history studies over the course of an entire semester.

I share with you the simple format of "Emotional Reflection" and hope you use it and enjoy it as much as I did. If you do, I would love to receive comments, suggestions and insights.