The Facilitator...

A facilitator teacher use what the students know and can bring to the table and helps the students build their own knowledge. The facilitator helps students find themselves and develop not only in school knowledge but also as human beings. They try to be aware of who their students are, what the students’ experiences are, and what type of interests their students have. The facilitator uses this knowledge to better design assignments for the class. It will also help the teacher to build relationships with the students and learn how to better interact with the students as individuals. A facilitator teacher focuses less on the Knowledge part and more on the Ends part of the MAKER program. Their Ends is more for the development of the students as finding who they are and as human beings rather than the schooling aspect of thing.

I think that a facilitator teacher’s classroom would have a more relaxed flow to it. Desks are always in rows and columns in most classrooms, especially in an executive classroom. I think that in a facilitator classroom the desks would not be quite as organized. They might be broken up into groups or set in a circle type shape. I think this would help the students to open their experiences and prior knowledge to the class a little better.

I think that the facilitative approach to teaching would be difficult because although you want to help the students learn to be unique people they also need to learn about the topics of what subject you are teaching. I especially think it would be hard to use a pure facilitator approach in a math or chemistry classroom. They are subjects that are almost as building blocks from one year to the next so it would be hard to stray into unstructured lesson plans and objectives.