Reflective Teaching

Well I've had this blog for a while and no one seems to be reading it anyway, including myself, so i decided to just use it for the class rather than setting up another. It has been pretty slow around here lately anyway.

My thoughts on blogging and journal keeping are, well, not much. I've never really had one of any kind. I started this just as a way to get a couple ideas off my chest, and after doing so I was pretty much done. I love philosophy, psych, and sociology. Thinking about the reasons why the world is in the state it is in and once in a while, I start thinking about something and just have to get it out. I can see however, how keeping a journal and tracking progress could help the teaching process. That's assuming you stick to it and add to your journal on a regular basis. As for the class I plan to use it to remind myself of the concepts that really stick out in each chapter to me as ideas that would work well for me as a teacher.

One of those things in Chapter one that really stuck out was the idea of using several different teaching strategies and rotating them on a regular basis. I know from my own High school experience that always worked best for me, as I bore easily from doing the same thing every day. Whether it's taking notes or playing thinking games, anything in overabundance becomes redundant. I like to think of it like a workout. If you do the same exercises all the time the muscles will adapt and growth will slow. You have to switch it up and trick the muscles into breaking themselves down in order to build new muscle. In this case you're doing the same in stimulating the brain to accept more material.
The second concept that really struck me in the chapter was the effect and even use of research in teaching. I am guilty of thinking of teaching as compiling facts and helping students learn those facts in various ways. The fact that certain methods have been shown to be ineffective while others have shown the opposite only reinforces the idea that teaching is more than just the level of your formal education. In fact formal education without the practical experience of dealing with children and young adults may lead you down the wrong path entirely and make your job harder in the long run. No research or concept is a fix all for the problems that arise in the classroom but they will prepare you a lot of these. As for the situations that arise that have no distinct answer, well, the great ones will find a way and learn from it.

My experience with teaching so far has been on the student side of things, but I think each of us has something to teach. Even as we are students today we make our teachers better tomorrow. I plan to try and remember that as I progress forward toward my career as a teaching professional. It seems most of the teachers I have had in high school and college that were great were always open to learning from further education and what we as student brought to the class. In contrast those I did not like typically were the ones who were tenured and nearing retirement and felt as though they knew all of the answers and were unwilling to see another side. It is only natural for kids of any school age to have ideas that clash with the ideals of a teacher who is near the end of their career. I am in no way saying that older teachers cannot teach, but I am saying a person older or otherwise who has forgotten how to accept new ideas and learn themselves has lost some of what it takes to teach. Teaching without learning is much like writing without reading in my opinion. It can be done but rarely is it done effectively.

Reflective teaching is a necessity to anyone who wants to enter the profession. As a teacher your teaching style will necessarily reflect the teaching style of the teachers you enjoyed in school. At times however, if the student is being honest, it means it is not only taking the learning activities you enjoyed in class and using them in a classroom, but also the ones you may not have enjoyed, but despite this were effective.

I have a myriad of lessons from the group at large in terms of the discussion forum, the one that sticks out most to me is Norah's reply to Rebecca on the subject of favoritism . Her personal account of dealing with students that had already been labeled as outcasts by the teacher she was there to shadow shows some of the effects favoritism, communication failure and perhaps an unwillingness on the part of a teacher to make an effort to help a student channel their efforts toward a productive cause. Namely their education. It should always be our goal as educators to keep this as our top priority. We are not only teachers, but in many cases, mentors, role models, and sadly enough, with some, the only person who can make a difference.

Acronyms

Ever wonder why we have to classify ourselves to feel like we belong?

I took my wife and kids to Community Wide Play Day today in Springfield Missouri, there were tons of games and activities for the kids, free food, free books and overall it was a really good time. It got me thinking though, each of the booths, and/or activities were provided by an agency, whether it was Oacac (ozark's area community action corporation) or B.A.C.A (Bikers Against Child Abuse), C.P.O (community partnership of the Ozarks), DCO (Developmental Center of The Ozarks) and I'm just grazing the tip of the iceberg. I'm really not complaining I think it's great these groups put this thing together. Like I said it was alot of fun, and their members support it and volunteer to work it. Alot of people put in alot of time on their own dime today and they should be commended for their work.

The question bouncing around in my head is this: Why do we need these groups? AS a whole I like to think were all good people, and we choose to do the right thing. But why then do we need to have groups outline the right way to raise our children, or groups to point out that child abuse is wrong? These are common sense questions, the answers are simple, we shouldn't need them but unfortunately without them alot of people (mostly kids) would be hurt, neglected, or otherwise put in harms way. At one time we didn't need groups or acronyms to define us and what we stand for. Back then the only acronym we had was U.S.A and we were just defined as Americans. If we all can somehow come together and choose to do the right thing together perhaps we can get back to that.

Are you fed up yet?

I've never been much on the whole grass roots activist bandwagon, but then for my generation, we never really had much to scream about. Most of us have been docile good little followers, because we have been lead to believe the world is ours to harvest of it's riches and pillage as needed to fuel our constant need for more stuff.
I include myself in every argument I'm about to make because, I too have been lead by the nose and have been quite content to just take what was offered as the best we can do.
I'm not really clear about when things began going downhill, it just seemed a matter of course. Things get better they get worse and life goes on. It seems however, for several years running now everything about our way of life seems to be steadily sliding into the gutter. Its a sad state really that the only way we notice is when we are hit in the pocketbook. In that case perhaps it is a blessing that the economy has taken such a downturn. I realize that may seem heartless to some of you struggling to get by and making it from paycheck to paycheck, but maybe as a whole this is what we need. I look at it this way, i work as a welder/grinder for an international stainless steel company and I probably have one of the best paying labor type jobs in my area, I have been frugal and made good choices on money matters. I have a mortgage and a car payment but other than that were talking, cable, utilities, phone, stuff like that. I should be able to get along pretty well, but I was better off a few years ago when I was making $5 an hour less. Now I'm sliding by and hoping my entire industry doesn't go down the tubes. Our union votes tomorrow to determine which of the three options our company is going to use to cut costs:
Either
a: we shut down for two weeks and 1200 employees don't get a check for two weeks , or
b: We lay off 280 employees
c: we all get cut back to 32 hours a week

The point is this, I'm not doing this just to gripe and complain,that's the easy way out. I'm hoping perhaps as a collective group we can discuss the pertinent issues, agree/disagree and bounce around ideas the average guy can use to keep his house in order. It may seem overly optimistic in these pessimistic days but i still believe the voice of the people can invoke change in our leadership, our personal habits and our quality of life. Isn't that why we cam over here from England in the first place, because we had hope of a better future. Tell me, what does your future look like right now the way we are going? There are no other unoccupied continents for us to run to this time, we must fix this system or pay dearly the consequences later.

Every time an election comes around i find myself asking the same question "seriously is this the best we can come up with." I voted for Bush so i know all about disappointment, but I'm still unconvinced the alternative would have been any better, of course it couldn't have been much worse but still it begs the question " can't we do better?" If you told your friends you were in the running for a promotion at work that would mean you would be paid $400,000 a year and all you had to do was spend a hundred million dollars to get it what would your friends say to you? Think about that next time someone tells you about checks and balances. The presidency garners too much power, the federal government garners too much power. It's time to stop putting up with the unfair taxation of our wages, the the trampling of our rights under the guise of national security and the constant lies we are fed while the government mortgages not only our future but the future of our children.