Chapter 10: Going Beyond the Classroom

This chapter deals with how not all learning goes on in classrooms. Sometimes students learn more outside of classes in workplaces or at home. It is important for teachers to try to link the work done at school to things that are happening in students lives outside of school. Many classes are easy to connect to outside events while others are more difficult. When a teacher is able to to connect a class to outside events it gets the students to pay attention and they are better able to comprehend the topic being covered.

I think that this is one of the most important things to do as a teacher. Connecting what you are teaching in a class to what is happening outside of school makes students pay attention. I know that in the classes I have taken I always paid more attention when the teacher was able to connect what we were learning to outside events. History and social science classes are the easiest classes to connect to current events while math and physics are easy to connect to everyday things. I think chemistry is the hardest class to connect because of the lack of mixing chemicals in everyday life.

Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

There are many things that can go wrong in a classroom. The mark of a good teacher is not one that never has anything go wrong for them but one that fixes the problems when they go wrong. One problem that happens in a classroom often is when kids start to get discouraged. This can happen for a number of reasons and some times it has nothing to do with classes but it will effect the classes and bring the student's grade down. One way to fence this feeling of discouragement off is to make sure that the student has updates regularly. Throughout the year ask the student how he feels about how he is doing in your class and whether you can do anything differently to help him. The other problem can come when the teacher gets discouraged. This happens often and leads to many new teachers quiting.

I found this chapter to be depressing. It was all about kids acting up and teachers quiting. It did have its good point when it discussed ways to keep kids from getting depressed and teachers from quiting. The part that really interested me was the part about not being a superhero. It's not your job as a teacher to take responsibility for every mistake the students make. You have to know where to draw the line. It is just as important to not give up on kids and always support them. Just by having one teacher believe in them makes a huge difference in a student's life.

Chapter 8:Teaching Teenagers Who Are Still Learning English

This chapter deals with the difficulties that a teacher faces when teaching a class with students that are learning English as a second language. This is a very difficult thing to do because the student is challenged by both the subject and understanding the words used to describe the topic. Some good ideas are to find out about the background of the students and build of from it. Find some area that that student excels in and use that to help make the student feel comfortable. Use the students knowledge of their background to help further the knowledge of the class. Look past the mistakes that they will make in English and show respect when they try to communicate. It's difficult to be in a situation where very few people understand you and ridiculing them for their English mistakes is not going to help them succeed.

I do not have much experience with non-English speaking people because of my Maine upbringing. I did take French in high school and in my senior year I traveled to France. I know how hard it is to be in a place where you do not understand everything going on because everyone is speaking a different language. While I was trying to decipher the language everyone else was taking in the concepts and getting a head of me in the classes I sat in on. I tried to speak but some of the teachers did not give me a chance to make mistakes and I had no way of learning.

Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

Some material is harder to teach than other material because of its content. It is the teacher’s job to make this material just as exciting and motivate students to want to learn it. The first step is to learn what your students already know. This will help you build a base and give you a starting place. Then you should link the new, harder material to the old material that the students already know. This will help keep the material interesting. You should also break down the new topic and teach it in smaller chunks instead of all at once. This makes the information easier to learn and if you teach it in a new, exciting way then your students will be more likely to pay attention.

I think that it is very important to give some sort of pre-test before the course starts. I have had a couple of teachers do this and I find that it helps me, as a student, see where the class is going. Teaching in new and exciting ways is what teaching is really all about. If you’re not able to teach something so that students will relate to it and find it interesting then maybe it is time to retire. I hope to bring excitement into my classroom everyday and have students that really want to take my course and get interested in the material.

Chapter 6: Motivation and Boredom

In our society most teenagers go to school and understand that it is important even if they do not want to go. They understand that school is important for social and academic growth and they see it as a way to survive in society. Even if students want to go to school it can lead to boredom and teachers must make sure that it does not. Kids can recognize when a teacher is passionate and wants to teach. These kinds of teachers get kids motivated and the teacher can get the kids to learn. It is also important for teachers to discuss issues that kids care about and connect the teaching to the real world. Nobody is going to want to learn if the lesson will not help them in the real world. Other ways to keep students motivated are to make sure that you give group work, make sure the students understand the topic, care about the students, and do not assign overwhelming amounts of homework. It is very important to make sure that students are motivated because otherwise it would be impossible to teach anything.

I found the part where they discuss that kids actually do want to go to school to be accurate. Even though it may seem that kids do not want to go to school I think that most teenagers do. They really do see it as a place where they can learn and grow. The social connections that they develop are reason enough for many students; however, it is important for teachers to make it so that students are coming for more than just the social factor and that they are actually learning. I also found the list of what the students like to read to be interesting. I like to read many of the same types of books and I felt like doing a survey to collect data so that I could run some analysis on it.

Chapter 5: Teaching to the Individual, Working with the Group

This chapter starts with describing a couple of the different types of students a typical classroom will include. This list includes students that will tune out, that know the information but will not raise their hand, that always raise their hand, that day dream during class, that cheat to get by, that joke around, and that do all the work but may not excel. There are many reasons why a student may or may not volunteer information during class. Sometimes it’s because the student does not know the information but many times it’s because they fear getting it wrong even when they are right, or they may fear getting it right and looking like a know-it-all. Then end of the chapter dealt with ways to make sure group work is going smoothly. You have to make sure that the project you have them working on is suitable for a group and that everyone will have work to do. It is also important to make sure that everyone is actually working and that a few of the students are not doing all of the work. When it comes to grading; however, it is good to remember that progress is individual and that some students may not learn best while in groups.

I found the conversation about the different types of students in the classroom to be intriguing. Looking back over my time in school I recognize students that fit each of these categories. What I find more intriguing is that I see myself falling into each of these categories at different times in my classes. In my Math courses I went through the hand-waver and the workhorse. In Physics I was defiantly the goof-off and I always felt like the con-artist in English. It’s strange how one student can have all the mixes that you would find in a classroom full of kids.

Focus the Nation

I attended the presentation entitled "Global Warming – The Clock is Ticking." I found that I did not really learn anything from the presentation. The beginning of the talk came across as being the same as any other global warming speach. The started by saying this is what we know will happen if we do not change our ways, and then proceeded to show pictures of Manhattan, Florida, and Portland underwater. The second part of the presentation was slightly better because they actually focused on some stuff that we could do to help slow down global warming. I liked that they added this part since the movie An Inconvenient Truth. I always felt that that movie was really lacking because it said that there was a problem but gave no plans for correcting the problem. I did learn a few things from the presentation
1) There was a mini-ice age about 1300 years ago where the world tempurature dropped 4 degrees and civilization was not wiped out.
2) If ice on land melts then the ocean levels will go up but if ice already in the water melts then ocean levels will stay the same.
3) When ice melts and more water is opened up the melting process intensifies because the water conducts heat better than the ice.

In my classroom I plan to use "scrap" paper to do most of the in class work. I will ask the computer center to provide me with paper that people print on that they never use. I could also do a project where the students figure out how much energy is harnessed using water, wind, solar etc. This would use a knowledge of numbers and conversions as well as helping teach the students about renewable energy.

Web 2.0 Educator

I read the blog entitled Science is Fun with the Right Teacher. I found that the author of the blog used the blog mostly as a place to post homework assignments or to post links to websites if the student wants to investigate a topic closer. When I'm a teacher I want to stay away from using a blog for just homework. If I make a blog for my students I want to make sure that I have a lot of fun things to do on the blog that pertain to math. The creator of the blog did use labels effectively and I found it easy to move around his blog and find what I was interested in. I really like how he posted pictures taken from class of students in lab. However, in this day and age I hope he got permission from the students to post their pictures on the internet. I liked some of the interactive sites he had linked in his blog and I found them informative and fun to look at. Overall I think he has a well organized blog but I think he could add more to it to make it more interesting.

Chapter 4: Creating a Culture of Success

I found these chapters to be helpful in describing how to keep your students interested in your class and how to make them want to come to school and learn. This chapter is really devoted to having faith in your students and believing that they can do the work. I really liked the section on not giving support for only final drafts. It makes it easier for the student if they are being coached the entire time and if they get continuous feedback. This way if the student is doing something wrong then they do not practice the wrong way and then find out that they are wrong. Continuous feedback allows students to constantly be improving. I really like the section about how to help students take risks and answer questions in class. I felt that they really hit the nail on the head with the different types of pressures that students feel at all times. Most people understand that a student feels pressure from their peers and from home and some of the other obvious places, but it seems that you have to be a student to understand about the pressure of always getting the right answer. Always being the one that the teacher relies on holds a lot of pressure and can be just as demanding as the other pressures.

I found that in a lot of my classes I was one of the students that the teacher would rely upon to keep the class moving. At times I would be thinking, “Oh, come on. Don’t call on me. Both of us already know that I know the answer. Ask someone else that does not get to answer questions a lot.” There was just as much pressure for me to pass in all my work and get good grades as anyone else even though I was getting good grades. I have had English teachers that would not correct your paper until the final copy. This always made me mad because I felt like I could not learn about the writing process if I did not know what I had done wrong. Then I have also had teachers that seemed to want to write my paper for me. I found this even more annoying than the teachers that gave no feedback. I understand that there is a certain format that the paper should follow but allow me to choose the topic and the words that I use to convey my point. I really liked how the book talks about setting clear standards. I have had teachers that did not have clearly stated standards and I would always wonder what was allowed during class. This added one more pressure that I did not need as a High School student.

Chapter 3: Classroom Behavior

I like how this chapter deals with the idea of classroom management from the students’ point of view. I found it very interesting how all the students wanted the classroom to be orderly and how they recommended setting boundaries on the first day. I think this is one of the hardest things to do as a new teacher because you want to be liked but your class so you tend to be more lenient and then class gets out of hand. I agree that it is important to be consistent with your rules. If a rule applies to one kid than it should apply to everyone and if you tell the student that you’re going to call his parent then call his parent. I found the part about why students are disruptive to be very helpful, if you are able to tell why someone is being a nuisance than you are one step closer to helping him and calming him down. One of the most helpful parts of the chapter was when they had tips from the students. Many of the tips seemed to be common sense but if the students felt that they were important enough to mention then it probably means many teachers do not follow them.

I have classrooms that were completely run by the students, classroom that were dictatorships, and some that were in between. The classes that were run by the students were not always with new teachers, I also found the same thing happened when teachers were about to retire. They seem to get to a point were they figure that they are going to be gone and there was no reason to just let the students do what they wanted to do. It did not matter who the teacher was, I found that I was unable to learn in these classes and I generally did not like the class. The classes that were run like a dictatorship were fewer but I found that they same thing would happen, I would not like the class and I would not learn. The classes that were somewhere between were the classes that I really liked, where the teacher had control but let the students make some decisions. These classes were fun and I was able to learn a lot from them.

Type I and Type II Technology

Type I technologies do not change how things are taught and do not use technology to its fullest extent.
1) When I think about Type I technologies I think about my High School Freshman English class. We had the new laptops but they were never used. They sat in the carts and the only time we used them was when we had to print off a paper or type a paper. They were never used to look up information or to augment our learning.
2) The next class that we never used technology to its fullest extent was in my High School Computer class. In this class we would walk in and sit down at a computer and spend the rest of the time following onscreen instructions for typing. We never even learned about the different programs in Microsoft Word or how to use the features. If any of us were to try to explore the computer and learn about other programs on our computer we would be told to get back to work and be disciplined.
3) Another class that Type I learning seems to be primarily used is in math classes. Many math classes use calculators to do basic math and for the most part nothing else. Calculators are useful devices but can be used in many more ways then just the four operations and for the most part they are not needed when it comes down to the four operations.

Type II technologies change how things are taught and use innovative ways in which to teach.
1) The first example that comes to my mind when I think about Type II technologies is when I think about my High School Calculus class. Every class period we used our TI-83 calculator to help us solve problems. We used almost all the different functions on our calculators to supplement our learning. When we were graphing we used the calculators to learn how adding and multiplying functions changed the derivatives after we made hypotheses on how we thought the graphs would change.
2) The next example that comes to my mind when I think about how technologies have supplemented my learning I think about Sophomore English in High School. My teacher was younger (just out of college) and was receptive to using technology in his classroom. We would use movies and make songs during the class. One lesson was taught as a “Survivor” type game with a lot of it filmed and each contest incorporated parts of the lesson plan.
3) The last Type II teaching that I can think of was in my Middle School Science class. My teacher had us build all sorts of things like when we were learning about Morse code we built a telegraph between our classroom and a couple of other classrooms and we actually sent messages back and forth.

Maddux, Cleborne D., and D. LaMont Johnson. "Type II Applications of Technology in Education: New and Better Ways of Teaching and Learning." Computers in the Schools. Vol. 22, No. 1/2, 2005, pp. 1-5

My MEL Experiences

· Student/Teacher Relationship: When I think about a teacher that I had that developed strong relationships with students my High School Sophomore English teacher comes to mind. Mr. Finch was a beginning teacher and he was always a big hit with the students. He assigned a lot of work and his class was hard to get a good grade in but he found a way to make it fun. He would assign projects where we would make a medieval torture devise, film a reenactment of Macbeth, and he designed an entire lesson plan around “Survivor.” While he was able to connect to students he also made sure that while you were one of his students that you were not “friends” and that he would not play favorites.
· Helping Students Succeed: The teacher that has pushed me the most and still does stay in touch with me and continues to push me is my High School Calculus teacher. I feel that he saw my abilities in math and instantly knew what I was capable of and if I tried to pass in something less than what he thought I could do, he wouldn’t accept it. Going into the AP exam for that class he told me that he expected me to get a 5 (the highest possible grade) on it. He knew that I had the knowledge that I needed and just came out and told me.
· Hands-On: The class that was the most hands-on for me was High School Chemistry. Everyday we would do a new experiment or activity in our small groups. We would be given an objective and the supplies needed with an overview on how to proceed but then we were left to ourselves for the most part.
· Learning Styles: High School Physics is a class that I feel was designed to apply to the majority of learning styles. Some of the class was spent doing experiments and that would interest physical and logical students. The small lectures and board work with reading to go along with it kept the visual and auditory students engaged while the dinosaurs used in many of the experiments appealed to the natural students. Every lesson plan involved parts that would get all students interested.
· Interest: The class that held the most novelty for me is my Honors Encounter with Western Canon class that I took at UMF. The class was really driven by the students and if we wanted to read a certain book that pertained to the subject we could read it and write an essay on it. The class always got to decide what we were going to do next and if we had questions the rest of the class would help us find the answers.
· Autonomy: The worst class I have ever taken in respect to having autonomy was High School Biology. When class started we had to be sitting down and then there would be a lecture for the rest of the class. I only remember doing two experiments and those were highly structured in such a way that everyone’s final product was almost the exact same except for the name on the front.
· Avoid Rewards: As enriching as my High School Physics was my teacher refused to avoid rewards. He had a part in his class where we would all go out into the “glass corner” and he would ask us questions dealing with anything. Anyone who could correctly answer a question would get a piece of candy (usually a Starburst). This was done everyday and I feel that my teacher used the time to make sure that we were all on the same page because while we were out there we would also discuss the experiment or lecture of the day.
· Connections: The class that seems to always connect to previous classes is math. Calculus I builds off from PreCalculus and is continued in Calculus II. Then the ideas of derivatives and integration are used in Physics to help define acceleration and velocity. These tie in to my life because I am a runner and while I run I find it easier to know my time when all I know is my position and speed just by using some basic calculus. These concepts also apply to my life because one day I will be teaching them to students.
· Context: One class that I took that I have never found a use for the information taught is the computer class I took in High School. Just about the only thing I learned in that class was were all the keys were; however, I had already been taught that in Middle School so going back over it in High School did not help me. I know that I am expected to use computers in real life but I feel that where I already had the knowledge that it was a waste of my time to be in the class relearning what I already knew.

Learning Style Inventory Results

I think that this captures me very well. I do find that I am very well balanced with a little less in auditory than the other areas. I was not surprised to find that my highest area was in logical because I love mathematics and I always read any articles that I find about math that interest me. Overall I think that this is a very good website and fairly accurate.

learning-styles-online.com

Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust, and Fairness

The part that caught my attention the most was the part about the two coaches. One coach has a laissez-faire style of coaching while the second coach made sure that the students ran the laps they were supposed to run.
I have had both of these types of coaches. In high school my cross-country coach let the team get away with not running or running fewer miles than we needed to run in order to be ready for races. Now in college the cross-country coach makes sure that everyone runs the miles needed. The way the new coach trains us is that if an athlete does not run during practice than he does not run in the races. I really like this way of teaching because it promotes the idea that someone must work hard to succeed which is what I believe.

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

The idea of having the students keep a journal appeals to me. This is discussed by both the students in the book and by the author. I like the idea of having a journal that is not graded (unless it is graded on participation).

I have had a few of my past teacher make me keep a journal and looking back on that experience I find that I really enjoyed keeping a journal during classes. Being a math student I complained about having to write but it did give me a chance to tell the teacher what I was thinking without having to go to the teacher directly. It also gave me a place to tell the teacher more about me and organize my own thoughts and ideas.