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]
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