Pedagogy of Control Article

I really thought that the Pedagogy of Control article brought up a great point. I have recently been thinking a lot about the way that I want to teach, and I have decided that worksheets are not something that I want to overuse in my classroom. I can see some of their value in that they are quick to grade and can sometimes give you good insight into what your students understand or don't understand, but I think for the most part worksheets are just busy work. Teachers tend to use worksheets because it is so easy to just hand out a worksheet and tell the students to do it. You can find a worksheet about virtually anything online, so that saves a ton of time of coming up with something yourself. I think that a big part of teaching is motivating children to learn, and worksheets are not doing anything of that nature. Worksheets are boring and tedious, and often frustrating if they do not provide adequate directions. I was looking through the folder of worksheets that Lara passed around and I noticed that one of the worksheets was handwriting practice for writing lower case i's. The student had written a few i's and then had made one i with a smiley face as a dot. Personally I thought it was really funny, and although it was not technically correct, I don't think I would scold a child for doing this. The child was obviously bored of writing i's. The teacher however had written "NO" in red pen next to it. I don't think that the student actually thought that his i was written correctly, and I don't think that she had the appropriate response. I think that it would be more effective to write something like, "This is very clever but not how an i should look." Or something that would get that point across. I think worksheets like this and the way you grade them can really destroy a child's creativity, which should be something we try to develop and explore in our classrooms.