That is me- on the left. My family and a couple friends drove for 24 hours to Siesta Key in Florida. My daughter is jumping full force straight into the waves.
I am in the Urban Teaching Program at Metropolitan State University. My license area will be Language Arts. I originally started off as a Math Major but switched out when I got to Calculus II. I realized it was keeping me from doing what I truly love- Language Arts. I regret nothing though. Along the way, I learned so much I otherwise would not have.
I firmly believe that each child has a spark of wonder that can drive their learning. My goal is to help develop that sense of awe in the world as they critically think about how they will define their future. I want for each child to see a future full of possibilities, have the skills to grab hold of them and throw themselves at their dreams just like my daughter jumping for the wave.
Definitely count me in the constructivist camp. Children even when
they are born do not come to us as blank slates. They have personalities
and preferences already built into who they are. This will help shape
how they approach the world and learn from all those around them. It
will be important to remember that students have a base knowledge before
they start school and then as they go through school and life they
build on it. I believe children learn best when actively engaged with
more than their minds- their whole being needs to be piqued to the
learning experience so they can understand it, whatever 'it' is, on a
more complete level. As such, it is a teacher's job to guide learning
and helping the student make sense of the content. It is not enough for
students to spit out the same input they heard or read. True learning is
incorporating new ideas into old one, forming deeper meaning, being
able to share that new perspective and then synthesize that new
understanding with other people- and with technology there are now so
many new and wonderful ways to interact with other people!
As stated in a previous post, my content area is language arts. I
learned to read and write by reading and writing- haha. I have found
these to be something I get better at just by doing them and challenging
myself to read and write more with more complexity. Also as previously
posted, I never did become a good speller. That is one area that has not
improved. I like to say if the nuns couldn’t beat an ability to spell
in me, nothing would. Somehow I muddle on by. That not withstanding, I
did have fantastic teachers all along the way who helped with feedback
and pointing me to some very good literature. They pushed me to be more
comfortable with public speaking too- handy for standing in front of a
classroom. I was given the chance to fail and then fail better next
time. Over time my writing and reading skills improved as I found my
voice and could critically think about other people’s voices.
Code of
Ethicsfor Minnesota Teachers Standards of Professional
Conduct
A
teacher shall provide professional educational services in a
nondiscriminatory manner.
A
teacher shall make reasonable effort to protect the student from
conditions harmful to health and safety.
In
accordance with state and federal laws, a teacher shall disclose
confidential information about individuals only when a compelling
professional purpose is served or when required by law.
A
teacher shall take reasonable disciplinary action in exercising the
authority to provide an atmosphere conducive to learning.
A
teacher shall not use professional relationships with students, parents,
and colleagues to private advantage.
A
teacher shall delegate authority for teaching responsibilities only to
licensed personnel.
A
teacher shall not deliberately suppress or distort subject matter.
A
teacher shall not knowingly falsify or misrepresent records or facts
relating to that teacher's own qualifications or to other teachers'
qualifications.
A
teacher shall not knowingly make false or malicious statements about
students or colleagues.
A
teacher shall accept a contract for a teaching position that requires
licensing only if properly or provisionally licensed for that position.
When I was going
up, I went to this place called a library when I had to do research for a
paper. They were and still continue to be places with great stores of
knowledge. I lucked out and had one three blocks from my house. Hours I spent
plowing through books. In my mind, the internet and electronic databases act as
modern day libraries… with of course some key differences.
The default to
get information has become how to access it via the internet. The internet also
acts as means to share personal thoughts and ideas, some with more credibility
than others. So as students learn to tool around the internet, it will be
important to teach them how to look with a critical eye towards validity of
sources. This is a skill that can be taught in my content area of language
arts- looking for the biases, comparing multiple sources and synthesizing
towards something that approaches the truth.
Students can
also create their own depositories of knowledge and understanding. As part of
reading a book, The Croquette for example, they can examine primary source
documents found online in databases and other webpages. They can then create
new layers of appreciation by building mock Facebook pages for character and
then interacting as if the character from the book. Reading and writing skills
are enhanced. Engagement can increase because they took it from consumption of
information to creating their own twist of it. For as long as it has some bases
in reality and context from the book, what’s not to love? Students can also use
databases and the internet to directly connect more easily with the creators of
information through email, messaging, chat rooms, Skype or their equivalent on
different platforms.
I also want to
point that the digital divide helps lead to other divides in this country-
education, employment, socioeconomic status, health amoung many others.
Whenever possible, those involved in education especially within urban schools
need to take steps to close the gap. Incorporating explicitly on how to
navigate, use and harness for their own voice over the internet should be part
of lessons in language arts as well as other content areas. Students need to be directly taught the
critical thinking skills they will need in the future and practice using them
within the educational system. It is not good enough for them to only be
consumers of whatever mush is being served on the internet and various
databases. The so called Information Age means nothing unless coupled to The
Age of Understanding.
For a behaviorist, assessing learning would
involve requiring students to reproduce facts and concepts as they were given
to them. There is a huge drill and (s)kill mentality to this perspective. Learning
is also organized in a very linear fashion and students would be discouraged
from moving on until they master those concepts. Mistakes must be fixed
straight away so that the child does not form a bad habit. Perhaps the most
discouraging idea to this idea of learning and assessing of learning is how
much emphasis there is on motivation coming from outside forces. Overall, I am
quite pleased this is not a very popular theory of learning anymore.
Cognitive psychologist look at learning and
assessing quite differently. Children are viewed as active learners with power
to build their own knowledge base. It is understood that children and learners
will often times categorize the world in very broad terms and then as they
learn more see more discrete pieces and differences. They believe children to
need more of a guide to help them by asking questions and then letting them
learn by self discovery. Motivation to learn comes from being confused but then
gaining new understanding. In this theory, I would argue that assessment is
more about tracking progress, letting the learners also self evaluate and from
there gauging how to proceeded.
Piaget was a
biologist who lived from 1896-1934. In that rather short life, he contributed
much to our understanding of how children learn. His first profession was that
of a biologist. As with most scientist, he had a keen sense of observation and
insightful way of questioning what he saw. Children’s thought processes
fascinated him and he wanted to know how they ticked. He developed his thoughts
around the idea that children first learn in very general terms and then build more
complicated schemes. Schemes are how information is organized. For instance, a
may have a scheme that says all fuzzy animals with a tail are dogs. Later
through a process of disequilibrium, a child learns that not all fuzzy critters
are dogs. An accommodation has to be made that includes different schemes for
cats and dogs. Piaget also
theorized children went through predictable stages of development.
Bruner:
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Jerome Bruner was
born in 1915 and is still on faculty at NYU. He believed much like Piaget in
that everyone tried to categorize everything so that they can make sense of it.
They did this through three different ‘modes’: enactive where learning is through the act of doing, iconic
where learning is through visually making sense symbols such as the written
word and finally there is symbolic where learning is through reasoning, logic
and abstract thinking. A wonderful thing about his theory is it states that the
learner actively builds their knowledge through social construction. This
process can be helped along through a questioning method referred to the
Socratic Method. He also advocated what is called spiraling, revisiting curriculum
in more and more complex terms.
Vygostsky:
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Lev Vygotsky lived from
1896-1934. One of his central ideas was that of ‘the zone of proximal
development’. It states that each person has a certain potential to their
ability to learn that can be greatly affected by cultural and social
connections. He said that even though learning should be directed by someone
with a certain level of expertise, it is not limited to only that arena.
Learning can take place from peers and other people. In fact, learning can also
be reinforced when a learner helps another peer.
As described in
the technology standards, spreadsheets are another way to increase student
learning, improve efficiency, access different types of learners and provide
multiple ways to assess student work. I’ve fallen in love with Google Docs as
an easy and free way (ha, minus how they collect your data and advertise to
individuals but that aside...) for students to use spreadsheets and other
programs for word processing. Teachers can also use spreadsheets as a way to collect information traditionally kept in a grade book. Unlike the standard Microsoft Suite, using spread
sheets in Google Docs can be collaborative and a breeze for the teacher to
track.
Because it is
such an open-ended tool, spreadsheets can be used across all content areas.
They can be used in the Language Arts field to make reading logs. For as long
as the student has the needed info, it can look the way they want it to look.
This can make reading logs more empowering since they designed the layout.
Spread sheets can also be used to organize information when reading. For
instance, it might make more sense to use a spread sheet to compare and contrast
text. Similarities and differences can be easily seen as the eyes scan the
columns. Based on student preference, spread sheets can also be a more visual
way to sort important pieces of information from stories, arguments and
speeches they are examining in class. Overall, this is a technology tool that
can expand learning and student engagement if they are taught all the wonders
found in the program.This grade and other progress can then often times be uploaded to online grade books often provided by school districts.
