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

Chalk and Wire/ Liscensure

This week's lecture really got me thinking about all the little details of the Education department I need to be thinking about. For example, right now I have no idea which state I want to get liscensed in... What differences between states do I need to look at to help me decide? I am thinking either Minnesota or Wisconsin, but I really have no idea. Maybe international!

Last spring I learned about chalk and wire in Ed 217 and may have submitted 1 or 2 artifacts. Until this week's lecture I did not realize how useful chalk and wire could be; uploading assignments just to have them there but not submiting them, including assignments from non-education courses, etc. I am hoping to use it a lot more from now on. I would like to build up a large collection of quality artifacts.

Any Advice?
I have been debating lately whether I want to change French into another teaching area for my major (technically would be adding on French major + Secondary Ed minor.) I want to continue with my freench and I think it could be helpful to be able to teach another subject in addition to Music. It would however take me longer to get through all of the music, french, music ed, and secondary ed courses. I'm just trying to look at the pros and cons. Let me know if you have any thoughts on my dilemna.

"Write and Wrong" reaction

I thought this article was very interesting and I still cannot get over the fact that the teacher, Connie Heermann, lost her job over this book. Yes, "The Freedom Writers Diary" may contain some profanity, racial slurs, and other "inappropriate"material, but this is the kind of books that kids should be reading in high schools. In our society today, profanity and other inappropriate topics are becoming more and more common. I don't think anything they'd read in this book is anything they haven't read about on the Internet or seen on TV. Also, it is these kinds of book that engage high school students. Reading one boring book after another won't make them any more excited or knowledgeable about living in our societies today. By giving students these challenging, controversial reading assignments, they are forced to reexamine their beliefs and standards and think more on their own instead of the norms their parents, communities or society in general have laid out. As I already said, I can't believe a teacher would lose her job for this! I only hope that someday teacher will have more freedom in chosing books for their classes to read.

Lecture: "Better Grades in Less TIme"

This Monday I went to Gary Tuerack's Lecture, "Better Grades in Less Time." It was very interactive and informative, and it kept my attention very well. The most interesting thing I did at this lecture was a speed-reading exercise. By the end of the lecture, through the use of this exercise, I was reading 70 more words per minute than at the first trial at the start of the lecture. He showed a few video clips that were both funny and informative of how to do better at school. He shared some tips about eating, including what types of foods are really good and really bad to eat before studying. He also talked about the statistics of how much we forget (ex. People forget 50% of what they hear/ learn in a day.) and what we can do in improve our memories (ex. visual aids increase retention by 40%.) I found this program to be very helpful in teaching how one can really be the best they can be by following some simple rules.