Edith Robertson

Stopwatch Teacher Edith Robertson

If Edith Robertson had played it safe as a teacher, she would have had a classroom like any other, a commonplace career, and over a thousand of her students would have missed out on her wonderful, colorful, innovative teaching methods. * Who said that learning should mean sitting for hours on end while some teacher droned on and on at the front of the class? Not Edith. * Who said that the best way to learn grammar was by memorizing and diagramming sentences? Not Edith. * Who said that fourth graders can't be responsible enough be in charge of high-tech equipment? Again and again, it wasn't Edith. * Want to teach the times tables? Edith knew that rote memorization was nonsense; people learn by doing, not by abstract thinking. Almost every lesson became a game or an activity of some kind, and everyone was included; every single student was in charge of something. * The title "Stopwatch Teacher" refers to Robertson's ingenious use of a stopwatch (which her student's used), to add the spice of competition to their learning. There was a reason Robertson's students came up an average of three grade levels in a single year. Her teaching methods had been addressing the right side of the brain-the silent, creative side that associates knowledge with kinetic muscular movement, and then stores that knowledge away in long term memory. Edith Robertson tells her story, with nugget after nugget of down home insight and dry humor.