Rubinstein TED Talk -Katelynn Gulya

This article was kind of difficult to understand but this summarizes how I felt after I read it. I was always in “gifted” classes throughout school. My teachers always would talk about how they would much rather teach classes that were deemed “accelerated” because the caliber of the students in those classes was so much higher than the regular classes. It was easier for teachers to connect with students who could think on a higher level. My teachers always had to go to seminars to teach them how to teach honors students. It is sad that in the article it was stated that some teachers do not believe that having classes that teach students at different paces in important. Throughout my schooling it was very important and my school always made a big deal about everyone learning at different paces. Now personally I do not think TED talks are the answer to improving our education. My teachers never showed them in any of my classes in middle school or high school. The few TED talks I have seen this year have been kind of weird and they have not been very meaningful to me. I have not seen anything profound come from them. I am sure that there are a few good TED talks; I just have not really felt any connection to the ones I have watched. Personally if my high school teachers had tried to show them to me in class I probably would not have paid attention in the slightest. The key to improving education is keeping students interested, excited, and passionate. I do not believe that having children or teachers watch TED talks will improve the education of our “gifted” school programs at all. Having teachers attend workshops to improve their teaching skills might make a small improvement but not much. Most of my teachers would come back from these seminars and say they were not at all helpful and that they just took away from the time they could have continued to teach us material for AP exams or for standardized tests. In my opinion, what was stated in Rubenstein’s article did not seem to make sense for improving education.