Reflection #13

It’s hard to believe that this is it… the semester seems to have flown by! This last week we talked about the history of tech ed – from ancient times to modern times – as well as what was referred to as “the realities of teaching”. We also heard a touching story from Geoff. I don’t know if I’d ever seen him cry before.

Over the course of the semester, I must admit I have grown much fonder of the idea of teaching. Back when I was younger – say, middle school into the beginning of high school – I wanted to be a teacher. An English teacher, so not exactly the same thing, but still in education. Then that desire kind of went away. I couldn’t really say when or why I lost the desire to teach, but industry seemed much more appealing to me than education. Having firsthand experiences with teaching during the semester, however, made me realize that education really is a rewarding, fulfilling field of labor. What Marzano said – that individual teachers can have a profound effect on students’ lives – along with the influence of some amazing teacher I myself have had over the years, makes me consider education with a little bit more seriousness than perhaps I would have a year or two ago. Also, the “realities of teaching” presentation seemed to include a lot more pros than cons, as least from my point of view. So that was encouraging as well.

Where will I go from here? Well, in a short answer, TES 276 B. Where will I go from there? I really don’t know. I guess I’ll only find out as I continue my studies and my searching and praying and figuring out. One thing I will remember for sure is the three-person problem – sharing of knowledge has to continue in order for it to grow exponentially. That is something I want to apply to my life. I can be a learner/teacher in any situation, anyplace, anytime. Whether or not I actually become a teacher, I believe that education is an integral part of any life, in or out of a formal setting.

This is the end of my last reflection in the series. It’s been a good semester. I look forward to whatever comes next.

Reflection #12

Time to reflect again.

This one is short since it’s only about one event, but it is rewarding. We had been working on our 6^th grade lesson plans for a while and all our efforts finally culminated in our experiences teaching the students Monday and today.

I was profoundly impacted by the level of goodness I felt as I saw how much the students appreciated what we did. I won’t go into full detail because the teaching reflection is another assignment but as I saw the kids get excited for the project, and interact among themselves and with us as they worked, and as I saw Miss Foster’s reaction to the kids’ excitement, I had a good feeling of having done something meaningful for the students. It was nice.

It was also pleasing to see all of our planning efforts and theoretical banter come together in a concrete lesson that we were able to teach and explain. Ideas are nice, but results are satisfying, and I would say that this was a satisfying experience for us, for the kids, and for Miss Foster.

So… I still want to go into industry. But after the experiences I’ve had teaching so far, I just may go into education at some point in my career. I never thought I would have so seriously considered teaching, but it is great indeed. 

Reflection #11

This week we worked on our lesson plans for the 6^th graders.

I realize this reflection will be exceedingly short. Give me a break, we literally only did one thing all week. Therefore, the “observe” part of this is only one line.

I love imagining how the students will react as we teach them! I always loved having guests when I was a young(er) student, so I wonder if they will get as excited as I always did. On the other hand, I also loved messing around whenever we had a substitute teacher. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to bite me.

Another thing I thought about was the excitement I get when the lesson plan comes together. As a student, I often couldn’t care less about what the teacher was teaching or how they were teaching it. Now as I’m preparing to teach, I am really invested in what we are doing. I feel bad giving so many teachers such little regard, they work hard and put so much into what they do.

I can’t wait to finish refining our plan and go teach. I will definitely think about different teaching and learning styles as we prepare to teach, and try to make the teaching as effective as possible. This assignment is the culmination of everything we have learned in 276 so far. I am excited.

[end of reflection]

Reflection #10

Reflection #10.

That's not a mistake. There was no reflection posted last week. 

This week was good. Every week is good.

We’ve been doing STL teaching. I’ll say more about my own performance in a different document entitled “STL Video Reflection”. We also had a learning adventure. More about that in a minute.

What do I have to say about STL teaching? Everyone has been doing a great job. I mean, sure, we’re far from perfect, but I have had my attention captured and I’ve learned interesting things. That’s a winning combination, as far as I’m concerned. What I really want to talk about for a second is the learning adventure…

As weird as this may sound, I loved the learning adventure. Doing that assignment was like a light bulb went off and I realized suddenly that I cared about this theoretical stuff way more than I thought. Looking over the list of philosophers was surprisingly pleasant. Learning all 20 STLs was mind-opening more than it was annoying. Knowing the parts of a lesson plan felt more empowering than like it was just memorization. Maybe it was because I kept calling it a learning adventure and not a test, so it didn’t have the feeling of work as strongly as it might have, but the learning adventure was nice.

What does this mean for me? Well, I will probably revisit the list of philosophers and learn more about their ideas, even if I’m not required to. I’ll keep a more open mind whenever we talk about the theoretical sides of teaching. And I’ll give more consideration to teaching research than perhaps I was before.

That’s all for now.

Reflection #8

This week was a good one. They all are good ones. We talked about evaluation and assessment and the difference between the two, we learned how to make rubrics, we learned that Geoff’s father (or some older gentleman in the story he told) did not know what a rubric was despite being a professor for decades, and we learned about telemedicine, telediagnosis, and water conservation from Francesca and Kat, respectively.

The idea of validity and reliability in education is interesting to me. Ideally, students would achieve a high level of each (i.e. consistently achieving excellent results). But I was wondering, if I could only choose one, which would be more important? I was considering especially a technology education setting, such as the one in the movie clip we watched with the boys launching rockets. They had high levels of reliability (that all ended in similar failures), and eventually ended up with a successful launch (validity in that one case). But I wonder, if they could only experience a lot of failed launches OR one successful launch, and not both, which would be most beneficial to their education? Yes, only launching one rocket and having it succeed would be awesome and motivational to the students, but at the same time one could argue that the experience gained through the long process of working through failures is worth many times more than the success of that single launch. I suppose this is one of those questions that could be highly debated, and of course, answers are always situational. In this situation, however, I would be inclined to lean towards the side of many failures, and not the single success.  

What does this mean for me? Well I like the idea of validity and reliability applying to life as well. In what situations do I achieve a single result and move on? In what situations do I strive to achieve proficiency, the acquisition of a skill being more important than a result? I’ll definitely think about this as I observe my own actions. That’s about all for now. I do recognize the importance of all the other things we learned, but the idea of reliability and validity has given me the most to ponder.

Reflection #7

High school observations…

Our visit with Braden Boss was interesting. He had a rather unorthodox approach to teaching, grading, classroom conduct, and student expectations. One thing he focused on was student progress as opposed to student achievement. Individual project grades were given on a traditional scale (i.e. if you did a mediocre job, you’d receive, say 10 out of 20 points), but class grades overall were given on a scale of improvement. This means that if your first assignment earned only 5% and your last earned only 20% but you showed steady growth, effort, and improvement, you would receive a high grade in the class. I won’t summarize all his views here, but I thought this particular aspect of his teaching to be interesting. After all, progress is important and should be rewarded, but in the end, the real world cares more about how good something is, and not simply if it’s better than something worse. I still am not sure how I feel about this system.

Something else I noticed was a significantly higher general level of disinterest among students and teachers alike. However, this was not the case in each classroom. Between the two high schools, I was able to visit four classrooms and I noticed a very clear pattern: the students’ level of interest in the material directly reflected the teachers’ level of interest in the class and the students. The more indifferent the teacher was, the more indifferent the students were. On the other hand, it was clearly visible that when the teacher showed a great deal of interest and passion in a class or a particular part of a class, the students’ interest levels would rise accordingly. This may seem intuitive but seeing this idea in action helped solidify for me the importance of teaching with the heart as well as the brain.

What does this mean for me? Well, according to what I learned from Gong, I am at all times both a learner and a teacher. This bit of knowledge – that is, that teacher interest affects student interest – can significantly impact how I perform in both of those roles. For example, as a learner, I can rise above the wave of disinterest among students the next time I have a boring professor (not Geoff). I can prepare myself mentally to learn even when a teacher does not show a particularly high level of interest in my individual success. As a teacher, knowing how my attitude affects my students, I can prepare to teach in a much more heartfelt and engaging manner. I can gauge what the students’ reactions to my teaching will be, based on my own observations. 

Reflection #6

Reflecting time.

I really want to learn how to speed read like Dillon Inouye. 1000 words every minute.

I find the idea of the three person problem incredibly intriguing. I had never before considered that knowledge ends at the classroom door without a third person. But thinking about it, any knowledge I receive in a class does indeed die with me unless I go and tell somebody else. When I first read that knowledge has to be taught among a minimum of three people to grow, I thought, “what a fascinating idea, I can’t wait to learn more.” Then when I read a little bit more, I thought, “what a simple and true concept. This is exactly true with everything I learn.”

This makes me even more excited to share knowledge with others. I love when I learn something interesting enough that I want to share it, but the idea that knowledge will either die if I keep it in, or grow if I share it, makes me want to share everything I learn.

That’s all I’m reflecting on today. It’s probably the most interesting thing I learned this week, and the one that will affect my future actions the most. 

Reflection #5

This reflection is also going to be fairly short because my thoughts on Monday’s visit are included in “Junior High Analysis 2”, a separate document.

What we learned… we had a few people teach us about some fun topics, including Powerade, mirrors, and where swear words come from. I did not know that swearing naturally produces certain physical and emotional responses within the body, and I learned more about mirrors than ever before, including how exactly they reflect. That’s one of those things that people could never explain to me clearly, so I never understood it clearly until today. We also talked about an inspiring Japanese professor whose first name was Dylan (his last name escapes me), and the concept and ramifications of exponential growth in learning.

I must make mention of something we read in class that will have a lasting impact on my life. Go figure, huh, something from school is actually changing me. There was a phrase in the excerpt from Bonds That Make Us Free that better described how I want to change myself than anything else I have ever read, heard, or composed myself, as far as I can remember: “Nothing in my experience has been a greater source of sadness than this discrepancy, this distance, between the person I am when I am true to what I know to be right and the person I become when I am not.” That’s incredible. Never has my greatest personal goal been so exactly articulated. The circumstances in which this applies to my own life are private and I’m not going to include them in this reflection, but I find it wonderful that Terry Warner was able to so clearly identify and describe this unfortunate circumstance which is yet valuable knowledge.

The story about speed reading a stack of books at a minimum of 900 words per minute and somehow comprehending everything better than at traditional reading speeds has inspired me to investigate some of these techniques. I’m all about learning more, faster. (Especially since my reading speed is something I’ve actually tried to improve before.) Now that I have a goal – 900 words per minute, minimum – I will be able to more effectively focus my efforts. Also, I will continue to ponder and meditate upon the aforementioned quote, and how that can change my life.

That’s all for today. Cheers. 

Reflection #4

This week’s reflection is going to be fairly short because it’s only a reflection of one class day. My thoughts on the junior high reflection are contained in another document which I have submitted on Canvas and have appropriately titled, “Junior High Reflection”.

On Monday we began the “teach something #2” series of lessons. Everyone seemed to do better than they did the first time. That’s good, I guess that means that all the teaching techniques we’ve been learning have actually stuck with us. Or at least some of them. Maybe our confidence has grown because we know our classmates better. Whatever the case, I’d say we’re improving.

I watched my teaching video and I must say, while I am usually very self-conscious and embarrassed to see and hear myself recorded, I felt pretty okay about the teaching video. That’s a good sign for me. Specifically, I feel that I was relatively comfortable during the experience and as I watched the playback, I didn’t see as much awkwardness as I have traditionally seen in videos featuring myself.

There were a few things that I didn’t like. I feel like the wood wand actually limited me because I didn’t move around too much except for the few instances when I moved the stick. I stood in or near one spot the whole time, which I didn’t like. Another small detail that I noticed was that I would often talk about something on a slide before actually displaying it on the screen, which maybe didn’t bother the class but it bothered me as I watched myself. Which means that at least one person in the class probably noticed. My tone inflection was a little flat as well, which limited my captivation factor.

For future teaching experiences, I want to work on my physical presentation (i.e. body/hand movement, walking around, etc.) and my emotion (speaking with varied tones, etc.). Also, involving more mixed media and taking advantage of a certain topic to use other forms of media is something I want to work on (i.e. having something carved to show the class in the case of wood carving, or allowing for audience participation in the craft). I guess I could say I’d like to work on my teaching creativity.

Those are all my reflections.  

Reflection #3

It’s that time again. The time when I make like a mirror, and… you see where this pun is going.

Part I. Here are some of the good things I learned this week: I learned about auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning. I learned about a plethora of teaching methods, notably schema, largely because it’s one of those strange words that when you say it a few times, it doesn’t sound like a real word anymore. And Geoff said schema a lot that day. I learned a few interesting things about Geoff’s teaching past, including the parts about smooth Greg and the terrible restrooms with no stall dividers. I also learned two good acronyms: PEEP (Providing, Enculturating, Ensuring, Practicing), and KCAASE (Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation).

Part II. The part where I will share some more candid feelings about what we learned and discussed, beginning with the learning type inventory. I did this one learning type inventory that I just picked off Google, and it asked me the worst questions! With the help of Paul Skaggs (last semester) and another learning type inventory (this morning), I was feeling pretty confident in my status as a visual learner. Then the type quiz was asking me questions like “would you rather go to a concert, a movie, or an amusement park with your friends?” and I’m sitting there thinking, “I like concerts better than movies. That doesn’t make me an auditory listener. I don’t go to movies or concerts to LEARN. I GO FOR ENTERTAINMENT.” Needless to say, I was unhappy with the results. I don’t consider myself a primarily auditory learner. I don’t know how these tests are made, but there needs to be a separation between learning and recreation.

                Here is something I’d like to say about the moral dimension of teaching. I know that I was rather forward with my disagreement on teaching transmitting moral values. Let the record show that I certainly think teachers should teach morals. I don’t want anybody to think that I think otherwise. I do believe however that morals can be removed from education. Should they? Absolutely not. But it can happen.

                Also, here is something else, and this leads to my action part. The definition we were given in class of pedagogy is “the art and science of teaching”. Now there’s something to think about for a long time. How is teaching an art? How is it a science? In what areas do those two overlap? That’s what I’m going to think about going forward. (Of course, in addition to how I can become a better teacher by using a mixed-method approach to teaching and by understanding the different types of learning in order to ensure that each student is able to receive the material and travel up the KCAASE scale all the way to “evaluation”. But that’s a lifelong development that all educators should strive to undertake throughout their careers.)

                As I sit in my classes, it will be interesting – even fun, perhaps – to see what my professors do to make teaching an art, and what they do that qualifies it as a science. Every teacher is different of course, so the evaluation of each one will be different but as a whole I imagine that my education is fairly homogenous experience – that is, between all my classes and professors, I receive a relatively equal amount of all the different teaching styles. As far as other things to say, I have none. [end of reflection]

Reflection #2

                It’s reflection time. Easier said than done when you have the same professor teaching you three classes in the same classroom, and two of them are on the same day.

                We learned about 27 educational philosophers throughout history. We also learned about the three main educational philosophies – behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructionism. We read some case studies and discussed the “Spelling B” situation as well as the menu example. We also challenged and tested our concise teaching abilities as we all tried – with differing degrees of success – to clearly teach a skill or idea in 5 minutes.

                I will keep the “observation” section of this short and move on to the analysis and action. I feel that both of those will be more fulfilling for each of us.

                Here are a few passionate thoughts about module learning and teacher-given options that I didn’t share while in class today. I find that the ability to make choices, when compared to a single option, either makes a situation significantly better of significantly worse. There isn’t really a middle ground. The situation becomes better when a person is open-minded, curious, disciplined, and an independent thinker. This type of individual will take advantage of such on opportunity to try new methods of learning, much as he would likely be open to try new menu options at a restaurant. On the other hand, many individuals in this situation will often stick with what they are good at, what they know, and what they feel comfortable doing. This is not to say that the person is apathetic; rather, the very situation coupled with human nature invites this lack of exploration. Human nature is defined by Newton’s law of motion: an object in motion or a person with previous experience will not change unless acted upon by an outside force. I seldom pick up my phone and discover new music – I stick with my own library unless another person makes a recommendation. The same way, most people will stick with what they know in a situation where multiple learning opportunities are presented. This minimizes the possibility of a breakthrough of knowledge. Unless a classroom is filled with independent, motivated learners, the majority of students will learn more if they are given a set assignment by their teacher, or given a limited number of more rigidly defined choices that are each designed to stretch the students’ knowledge and ability.

                One more thing I’d like to talk about for just a moment. I’m not sure about these three educational philosophies – behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Yes, I agree they all seem legitimate and make sense to me. But I would argue that there are additional educational philosophies as well. (Perhaps there are. I plan to research this more on my own. That’s part of the “action” portion of this reflection.) For example, what if my idea were to teach extremely difficult concepts first, making all the easier concepts seem exceptionally easy and quick by comparison? Perhaps impractical in some areas – actually, I’m almost positive we could easily rattle off many places where that would be an impractical technique – bit still a valid opinion and a viable course of action. This idea directly opposes the concepts of constructivism, but doesn’t really fit into behaviorism or cognitivism either. I am sure there are many more educational ideas that fall into their own categories, and I would be interested to see what other philosophies have been created to categorize them, and what other ideas have been presented that fall into philosophies other than the three we learned about in class.

                And of course, there’s my action. How will this change me? Well, as I prepare to become a better teacher, I will pay more attention to what my professors do well and what could be improved. Every time I go to class, it’s an opportunity to perform my own real-life case studies. And of course, I will research/invent-if-necessary my own educational philosophies. I’m sure there are a lot of unique, uncategorized teaching methods that are just waiting to be discovered and analyzed.