A different perspective

I have been learning a lot through the Monday night lectures, hearing the viewpoints of people involved in education in different ways, but I particularly enjoyed this past week's panel of parents. I liked how they said the most important to you (as a parent) is to make sure you kid is getting the best and doing the best that they can. Yes, the past panels of school board members, administrators and new teachers have obviously cared about the children, otherwise why would they have chosen Education, but to see the parent's passion and their "It's all about my individual child being accommodated for and doing their very best" mentality was really powerful. It's interesting to think that there will (hopefully) be a parent (or parents) this passionate about their child's learning for every student in your class. I think this is a challenge to accommodate for each of the different students. Thus accomplishing this is a step towards becoming an expert teacher.

The parents were the first group to not support NCLB and that was refreshing to hear. With myself (and some of my fellow Luther Education students), not having the most positive views of NCLB, I was was starting to wonder if we were completely off in having these feelings because the other panels all seemed to support it pretty strongly. I especially liked hearing from the two mothers who used to be teachers and whose children have been going through the system for awhile. As I hope to be a parent someday too, I have been thinking about how I will have view education from both sides, teacher and parent. I think it is so very important for children to have this support system in thier lives. Hopefully the parent can provide this, but if they are not then the teacher must step in and provide that supportive environment.

"The Last Lecture" blew me away... again

My study group read Randy Pausch's book "The Last lecture" and are preparing a presentation on it. This book was such an inspiration... I could go on, but you'll learn more about the book and our opinions of it in our presentation. I have been rereading parts of the book very carefully and looking for specific details that we can include in our presentation. I have not forgotten (nor do I think I will forget) the impact this book has had on me, but lately I have felt like I'm forgetting that this, all of Pausch's unique stories and reminiscences of big dreams coming true, were accomplished by a real person. In order to make it more real to me I watched his complete lecture on YouTube. Wow! Yes, the book is very well written, but there's something about the emotion enthusiasm of a person that can't quite be captured in the same way in a book. I wouldn't go to the point of saying watch the video over the movie because the book expands on some of the ideas that he briefly touched on in the actual lecture, but I do think seeing Randy and hearing his voice share his message is very powerful. I have included the link to this video on the side bar... "Randy Pausch's Last Lecture." I encourage EVERYONE to watch it! : )

Ed psych topics pertinent to other subjects

I found the topics for class the past week to be absolutely perfect timing. Starting last Wednesday, the concept of creating lesson plans was brought up. This was very helpful as I have not had to write may lesson plans yet. For an independent study project I'm working on this semester I am creating a compilation of French children's songs and correlating lessons that can be used to teach each song to an elementary music class. For the past few weeks I had been trying to come up with precise and easily comprehensible lesson plans, but didn't really know how to accomplish that. Wednesday's class was like a breath of fresh air, gaining the knowledge of what is important to include in a lesson plan.

I was also very excited about our assignment for Monday which was to come prepared to teach something. I initially was thinking of doing something creative like baton twirling but then I realized this could be the perfect opportunity to test out one of my French children's song lessons. I taught two of my peers "Ah, vous dirai-je mamn" and part of the corresponding lesson (as I didn't have time for the whole thing.) It was really great preparation for when I teach it in an actual classroom next week. It was also helpful to get some feedback from my peers.

Bringing Ed Psych Concepts Home

Over fall break, I went home to see my family, which includes 4 young children (ages 2,3,5, and 6.) After only the first half of the semester of Educational Psychology, I found myself paying very close attention to their different behaviors and where they were developmentally. I also used different teaching strategies in interacting with/taking care of them.

For example, the 2-year old is in the midst of the autonomy versus shame developmental crisis. Most of the time, she mimics her 3-year old sister, doing, saying, and wanting to wear everything her big sister does. However, it was interesting to see when the 3-year old was at preschool, the 2-year old was a completely different person, making her own choices and saying whatever she was thinking. Another thing I noticed was her speech had improved dramatically since I last saw her in August. She used to talk with one word or short phrases, but now she is speaking in full sentences. It was so incredible to see this development in only a few months.

The 3-year old is in her first year of preschool. She is learning a lot about cooperating with others at school, which she has had a hard time doing in the past. As I stated earlier, she loves to be the leader of her younger sister, but she also likes to follower her older sister and brother too. She is very interested in dress-up clothes and playing make-believe. All of these observations tell me that that she is facing (and resolving) initiative versus guilt.

One day all 4 of them helped me make some muffins. It was very fun to implement some of the teaching strategies. I had the older kids get ingredients out of the cupboard and help me with measuring them out. Then when it came time to stir. I told them we would take turns, going in order of how they were seated around the table. I also found helpful (and fun too!) to sing songs through the whole process to keep the younger 2 kids interested when they weren't helping out. These strategies ended up working very well for everyone. This doesn't happen very often that all four kids enjoy each activity, so I was pleased. Overall this was very exciting visit, being able to see their different stages of development.

"Memorize and regurgitate" midterm exam

I found it very difficult to make myself study for the midterm for this class. It was not the content that made it difficult. I found these 5 chpaters interesting and some of it was a repeat of what I learned in General Psych 2 years ago. Also, I am pretty good at memorizing information so it wasn't getting all of the vocab and mulitple choice answers memorized that frustrated me. It was mentally challenging in the way that I kept thinking, "I hope I never test my students like this" and about how ineffective this type of testing can be for students. Yes, there is obviously going to be some memorization (even if it's just basic formulas or concepts,) but students' achievments and improvements shoudl be evaluated in different ways.

As I said earlier, I, myself, am pretty capable of studying for these kinds of tests, but what about people who aren't good at memorizing flash cards and reviewing pages of multiple choice questions muliple times? Should their grade suffer because they are not as good at studying that way? I am looking forward to choosing what type of project/test/report I will do for the final!

"High Stakes Community school" role play

I thought this week's lecture was very engaging and educational for me. I have never been to a board meeting so I was looking forward to getting a little insight of what goes on at them. I appreciated Dr. Knick and Dr. Langholz's seriousness in their role playing. This made the board meeting seem more realistic. Part of me thinks it would have been helpful to have learned a little bit more about No Child Left Behind (NCLB) before the role playing lecture. I would have understood the proposal better. On the other (stronger) hand, I think this role played board meeting was an excitng interactive way of learning about NCLB.
I am glad my group got to represtent the people supporting the Fine Arts who did not support the proposal. I personally would not vote for it. Yes, there are positive effects that would likely come out of it such as the school's standardized test grades inccreasing and its student's excelling in math and reading. These are useful subjects to be good at in their after-high school life, but there are many other important things that can be learned through the Fine arts and Extra Curriculars. Students can improve social skills and be inspired to think creatively and think outside the box. If the proposal were modified I might suppoprt it, but as of now there are much more important things to learn during adolescence standardized test material.

What is this world coming to?

I've always thought it was ridiculous how much influence media has on people (children and adolescents in particular.) Wednesday's class discussion and comparing of values in 1980s and now got me thinking even further about the extent of its influence and the effects media is having on our society.

Growing up with 4 siblings, my parents were very strict about what we watched, listened to, and played with. No video games or weapons (guns, swords, etc.) were aloud in the house. Now I have 4 more younger siblings (all under the age of 6) and they are aloud to have toy guns and swords (though can not point them at be violent towards anyone.) We also have a game system for them, though most the games are either Disney or Racing. It seems to me like my parents are still grounded in their beliefs, but after Wednesday's discussion I now wonder, "What changed?" Are they really just trying to keep up with the times?

About the 16 year olds running a prostitution ring in MOA... Do they really have NO moral issue with doing this? I think this comes back to parents wanting their kids to be happy and kids wanting to fit in. The media is creating this monster of an image that young girls see as their ideal look/ attitude. It needs to stop. Parents need to teach their kids morals and not worry about their day-to- day happiness, but rather their life-long happiness and well being.

The article about the school shootings in Finland was very disturbing ,yet at the same time it wasn't too shocking. I mean, what do we expect kids (and people in general) to learn from playing "Kindergarten Killer" and similar games? I do not understand why and how people can play these sorts of games. It makes me sick just thinking about the fact that they exist. I don't think that the problem is simply regulating what kids can and can't rent, play, view on the Internet. The bigger issue is that people of all ages have come to believe that it's ok to play extremely violent and realistic video games. Someone might argue "it's just a game/ entertainment," but it's NOT. Though they might not realize it by playing these games for hours and hours their brain starts to think, "Wow, this is kind of fun!" I don't know what the solution is, but something needs to change in our society as a whole.

As teachers, we will be a big part of the future generations' moral development. We need to come up with ideas asap that will help to get the media and morality of our society headed back in the right direction