Lesson 4 Blog Response

What does it mean to be relational as a teacher? How will you interact with your students to accomplish this?

Being relational as a teacher means consciously working on building a relationship with each student through consistent, positive interactions.  It means interweaving what I know with who I am so that students feel that they are interacting with and learning from a real, live human being.  If I can create a bond between me and my student, if I can make them feel that I really care about them and their learning, they will work harder for me and take more risks which I need them to do in order to learn.

Some ideas I have for building relationship:

* personalized comments/feedback on work, not just letter grades

* finding positive ways to deal with classroom discipline/behavior issues like restlessness, chattiness, boredom. 

* avoid bond-destroying behavior like shaming or humiliating students in front of others

* model respect by treating each student as well as I would treat any adult

* when appropriate, sharing stories about myself

* eye contact, active listening

* include sense of humor, fun, silliness in the class

* smile!  lots of people don't

Lesson 3 Blog Response (Dougherty)

After watching the videos on Attention, Emotions and Learning, describe how this information impacts you as a teacher.

This lesson builds upon what I learned in Lesson 2 – that as a teacher, I have to think “big picture” about what I am doing to set my students up to succeed.  Knowing my stuff in terms of my subject expertise is not enough.  I am not the educational equivalent of a UPS driver, just delivering packages of wisdom for my students to learn.  I am more like a director of a theater production – I have to guide my performers but I also have to consider how every environmental detail impacts the audience’s experience of the play.   Lesson 2 taught me to think about how my classroom affects my students at the physical level:  light, temperature, sound and smell.  Chapter 3 tells me to think about how my classroom affects my students at the emotional level.  Have I created a safe and nurturing learning environment where students can relax and take some risks?  Have I spent time arranging and decorating the room to foster the belief of every student’s competence and ability to learn?  Am I pleasant and safe to interact with or am I demanding, harsh and quick to judge/punish?  Am I resource to my students or just one more thing they must survive during the long school day?  This is sure to be a great balancing act and I appreciated the point that the “Emotions” video made – that any of us who are responsible for young people’s development (parents, educators, caregivers) can get burned out and stressed out.  When we do, our ability to create positive interactions is severely limited, so we need to take care of ourselves by way of diet, rest, exercise and outlets for our stress.  I see this in my parenting experiences – if I get to run 4-5 times a week, I have the patience of Job.  If I don’t, then I am often disappointed in myself and with my snappiness with my very young children who don’t know what to make of my stormy moods.

Lesson 2 Blog Response (Dougherty)

After watching the videos on Vision and Hearing, describe how this information impacts you as a teacher.

I need to consider how my classroom environment either enhances or obstructs my students' ability to learn.  This is a challenge for me in that I am not a naturally good at decorating, but I can see how taking the time to learn how to set up a pleasant classroom experience can, at the very least, enhance my students’ ability and desire to learn by making it a place they want to be.  At best, it can actually encourage their learning by charging the air with more oxygen and promoting mental and emotional states that make learning more possible.  I need to think about how to manipulate light in my classroom to make the room calm and welcoming, add plants, use mild, natural scents and include music in my curriculum – all with the goal of creating an environment that is warm, welcoming and conducive to learning.  Since students have a dominant ear (not related to their dominant hand), it’s important that I move about the classroom.  Assigned seats are not a good idea as each student needs the freedom to find a place to sit that works best for them in terms of hearing and vision.

The second part of this lesson is understanding what a critical role hearing and vision play to learning – that seems obvious at first but the relationship between vision/hearing and learning is more complicated than just whether a student sees or hears well.  It is possible for students to pass hearing and vision screenings just fine and yet have problems in these areas, either at more subtle ear/eye levels or with the part of the brain that process visual/auditory information into electrical impulses the brain can use. I’ve had firsthand experience with this issue and my kindergarten-aged son.  He passed an initial hearing exam 100% in both ears, but subsequent testing showed that while he was hearing sounds, he was not hearing tones, making it difficult for him to distinguish the difference between sounds like “P” and “B.”   No matter how old my students may be, I need to consider whether a hearing or vision problem could be contributing to their learning or behavior issues.

June 7, 2013
EDU 270 - Lesson 1 Response

After watching the videos on brain architecture, plasticity, and understanding the impact of the environment on a child, how does this information impact you as a teacher?

I understand better now that as a teacher, I am creating an environment and choosing experiences that will either help or hinder my students ability to learn.  It is not enough that I know a lot about my subject field.  It's not enough to show up every day prepared and ready to teach.  Learning is not an outside-in process.  It's a process where my students are exposed to all sorts of experiences throughout their day - home, school, sports, friends, jobs, etc.  As my young students move through their days and weeks, their brains have to decide if the information they've gained from these experiences is important enough to retain or if it should be pruned.  I need to learn what I can do to ensure that the information I am responsible for is delivered in a way that makes the adolescent brain want to retain it.  This makes the job of a teacher considerably more complex than I think most people understand.