Stop Learning One Does Not

Well… Monday didn’t quite go as I originally planned. I came up with so many things to make the lesson interesting all of which I never got to. I’ve taught before but something about being timed threw me off my game. This ended up being one of my worst teaching performances. Have you ever practiced for something and your keep repeating to yourself “whatever you do don’t…” and you practice so you won’t do whatever you said you weren’t gonna do but as soon as you go to do it for real you do it anyways. That’s exactly what happened to me on Monday. I had made the lesson out to be discussion based teaching which worked out a little bit until half way through. About half way through you look at the clock and realize that, according to your original plan, you’re way behind and you don’t do it on purpose but you switch to autopilot mode. You get so consumed with covering everything in the lesson plan that you don’t stop to make sure the students understand any of what you’re saying. There’s a saying “everyone has a plan until they get hit” well I guess to an extent that can be applied to teaching as well. I had a plan until I got in front of the class and all my plans went out the window. There is something I learned from all of this though: it’s not the end of the world if you don’t finish your lesson plan, it’s more important that the students understand the material.

            Today I learned something interesting, well interesting to me anyways, about planning a class lesson. I’ve never wanted to cover just the basics of American history; skimming over it to make sure I cover all U.S. history at the expense of going more in-depth with my students. I learned about something called a flipped classroom where part of the learning happens outside of the classroom. Where you can post videos about the lesson for the next day online, the lesson on the video covers the next day’s lesson broadly. This allows for the teacher to go more in-depth over the topics covered in the video. This allows the class to spend more time in discussion and more importantly make sure the student’s understand. A high school in Michigan was in the 5% worst schools in the state but when they switched it over to a flipped classroom it became one of the best in the state. It allows teachers more time to help students understand the material and to have discussion, in class activities, or time to do homework with the teacher there for help.

To The Point Of No Return...

            This week in class has been interesting to say the least with almost everyone presenting their lesson to the class. I can’t lie, getting to act like little kids to create a more realistic representation of what these future teachers will be dealing with has been a hoot. It’s fun to sometimes annoy our fellow classmates by acting like five year olds, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand or create too much of a distraction, under the guise of presenting them with what to expect when they actually start teaching. But I know this is a doubled edged sword and that whatever I dished out on them I will get back in return on Monday. But this is a good exercise on how to deal with the age group of students we’ll be teaching. Brittany went all the way with her representation of the age groups of students. Working with kids from ages five to sixteen I know what they will say, how they will act, and generally what kind of questions they will ask. And Brittany hit the nail on the head with her “act.” Makes me a bit paranoid of what she’ll try when I have to present but I’m sure it will be interesting to say the least.

            Planning the actual lesson took me about five hours, most of it reading my old notes, and trying to make history interesting, not an easy feat. I’m still not sure whether it’s good enough for Monday. Trying to incorporate many of the different things that we’re gone over in class has been difficult. History has typically and for some good reasons been a mostly lecture style class. It’s hard to come up with more discussion based teaching since the topic I’m teaching requires some knowledge of prior lessons and events most of which the “students” I’ll be teaching won’t know. Because of this it might kill the discussion based idea, at least the main part of it, but I was able to come up with something that would include some discussion so it’s not a boring lecture. Plus the lesson will only be thirty minutes max which kills my in class project idea. Since all the projects require knowledge from the lesson which takes up most of my time and I won’t have time to do the project. So my lesson is just a little too short to meet the minimum requirement and too long to have an in class project. This dilemma had me doing a couple hours of research for creative ideas to fill the gap and make the class more interesting. I believe I found it after about two hours of searching, I think it might just work. What is it exactly? Well I can’t say right now for obvious reasons of course. But I’m glad that we got to observe the high school a few weeks ago. I took some of what I saw in that class and implemented it into my own lesson; I’ll talk a little bit more about it on Wednesday. But I did learn something from this that is time management. It took five hours to create my lesson and to verify my info plus research to add some more interesting aspects of the lesson. When I finally get out of here and start teaching for real I’m gonna have to take into account how long it takes to make a lesson, grade papers and tests and all that, and deal with the school and angry parents. I also need to create a flexible enough lesson plan to take into account setbacks and allow for student interaction. But I am glad I’m learning it here and now instead of later and when I’m out there teaching for real.

From Being A Student To Being A Teacher...

Here we are again one quiz, two papers, and four projects later from last week. I’ve done more projects and written more papers in these past two months than I ever have in two years. I feel like every time we finish one project another one pops up that we have to do. This new one, well it’s kinda two, is one about diversity and the other is actually teaching the class next week. What’s funny is that doing the Class Planning project gave me more trouble putting together than what I’m gonna have to do teaching my content. The only problem I have to confront isn’t how am I gonna make the lesson longer but how am I gonna size it down to only thirty minutes. They say if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life and when it comes to anything history related there’s no such thing as work for me. While some people are going out on the town and partying, I’m here reading about Churchill, Jefferson, and Cicero. I love the subject I’m going out to teach; I’m enthusiastic about my content. I feel like it’s one of the most underrated subjects taught in schools yet it’s one of the most important. But how do I take my enthusiasm for my content and make it interesting for my students? With all these projects, quizzes, tests, and papers I’ve been feeling kinda depressed. But the news that we will be teaching a lesson on our content actually lifted me up. It’s a good place to start on critiquing how we’re gonna teach in a nonjudgmental environment that offers positive criticism on how to improve before you have to go out into the world and do this thing for real.

Another One Bites The Dust... And I Need More Coffee

Last Wednesday in class we were discussing Formative and Summative assessments. And since I've already posted a blog about our high school visit last Monday and we were on break this Monday so I am left to blog about the two forms of assessments from last Wednesday. I am going to attempt to dissect the topic and find a deeper meaning and understanding of the content that I can learn from and apply to my own philosophy.
From my own understanding Summative assessment are in short what we see most in our schools, well at least from my experience. They take the form of chapter tests, mid term exams, and finals. The things all students are pressured to do well on or else they'll fail and have to repeat the course again. I don't think anyone in their right mind enjoys these. I've seen seen students going into take tests with bags under their eyes, red eyes, shuffling their feet because they lack the energy to actually pick up their feet, or are shaking from nervousness or from excessive caffeine to stay awake all night to study. I know the feeling of some of these from studying for finals. But it seems as though these tests and finals and such are not even a true measuring of the students knowledge of the content only that they can normally spit out whatever it is that is required for that one test and never have to remember it again. That the student can argue something from the teacher's perspective but the teacher not teach the students to think critically and think for themselves.
So from what I can understand Formative assessments are a form of "checkpoints" in a class. It is a way for the teacher to check a student's understanding of the topic while teacher is still occurring. It takes the form of quizzes (of low to little point value, helps avoid stress of high point value quizzes), class discussions, online blogs, and exit slips. Funny thing is that until now I haven't notice that this is exactly how our class operates. We do discussions in class and bounce ideas off of each other and it's already interesting to hear some of the different ideas people have about teaching, especially the one that made me question whether we should even have "grades" as we know them. The class is not so much a lecture as it is like almost an open forum, which helps remove the stress and we are emboldened to speak up and talk (as long as it's on topic). It creates a less stressful environment for the student and I think it help bolster the students self esteem in knowing that he has a voice to speak, to question, to discuss, and to let their own ideas be known. From a teacher's point of view I can see why some might be hesitant to allow in class discussion on a regular basis it would require that the teacher give up some power in the class. It would require that teachers not rely so heavily on their step by step uniform class schedule. It would also require the teacher to yield to the student and let them speak instead of telling them that there's no talking in class and to silence anyone that may hold a different opinion or approach as well as being willing to answer many more questions, requiring that the teacher know the content inside and out. But what is the purpose of having a teacher? To teach, to help students learn new knowledge and its importance and application in their own lives. How much are they learning if a teacher is simply reading from an obscure textbook? Are they learning why the content is important to them? Are they learning how to apply it in their own lives? Are they learning period? Although this may make a teacher feel uncomfortable in giving up some of their power, the whole basis of this is to help students learn and that is the whole basis for even being a teacher.

Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder...

Sorry I’m late on this blog, my computer crashed and my iPad has a virus and I had to rewrite some of my essays that were due and study for my mid-term exams. Today is the first day I’ve had to actually work on my stuff from EDU 250. It’s just been one of those weeks.

            Well last Monday we finally went to visit the high school, and as I suspected it was the best visit of the three. Before I start rattling off about how great the class I observed was I’d ask for a moment of silence for our brothers and sisters who went behind the Iron Curtain and were assigned to the Soviet math class… now that that’s over let’s begin.

            The class was much different than what I expected of a history class. History has always been described as one of the most boring classes besides math but what I observed was one of the most interactive classes I’ve seen out of all our observations and a number of my own classes in high school. The teacher was enthusiastic about the content she was teaching which always helps in keeping a student’s attention. The teacher used a projector hooked up to a laptop for the PowerPoint notes and for videos. The videos were very helpful for the subject she was teaching on, textile mill operations, about how the mechanisms operate and their importance. Being a history nerd who has a good understanding of important historical events and inventions; explaining how a textile mill works with no pictures, diagrams, or videos would have been hard for anyone, including myself, to understand.

            The teacher did not lecture the entire class but instead it seemed she taught by asking questions to the students. I don’t know how to phrase or word it other than say it felt like there where nonstop questions the entire class time; which worked to the teacher’s advantage since almost all of the students seemed to pay attention, knew the content, and were VERY involved. The class seemed very lively and the students actually liked the class and the teacher. The teacher was also at times comedic, we’ve all had that teacher that attempts to be funny and flops, but she genuinely could make a joke and related to the students appealing to what she knew teenagers like and hold valuable.

            The teacher it seemed had a loose teaching plan that allowed for more student interaction and took into account of possible setbacks. The teacher took her time and made sure she covered everything before moving on. The teacher also tied together the past and the present to make the content relevant to today. A great example would be when she was teaching about the Tariff of 1832 which she tied the events to the U.S. trade agreement in the Far East Asian nations. The teacher also had an interesting way with students keeping notes which I could not put any better than Colleen did in the last paragraph of her blog.[1]

The teacher, after the class had finished the lesson for the day, then worked in groups on an in class project. The students were given a paper with some questions on it and then three primary source documents from the biggest and most read newspapers of that time about the different economies of the industrial North and agrarian South. The questions weren’t read the article and answer the questions but were thought provoking questions to create discussion on the subject between the students. The whole time the teacher was walking around the class answering questions and making sure the students understood what they were reading.

Overall the class was great and it was the best one I observed and only helped reinforce my decision to teach high school. It also made me realize that I need to step up in my teaching methods seeing how well she handled her class. The three things that really made me think about how I planned to teacher were:

                               I.            How she used the tech, particularly using it when simply reading and talking about a subject won’t help the students understand the content.

                            II.            Her use of questioning to keep the students active in the class but never putting pressure on a student who didn’t get the answer right or didn’t know the answer but would just move on to the next person.

                         III.            Finally her relaxed teaching plan taking into account setbacks and allow for student interaction.

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[1] http://ccockman.blogspot.com/2015/10/back-to-high-school.html

 

Chapter Six: Middle School Here I Come...

Aaaand we’re off! Another week of observing classes this time it was middle school. To me at least this trip was much more interesting and familiar. First we were all individually placed in a sixth grade class by ourselves, which I was not expecting and made me a bit nervous. Class has already started and you come in and thirty pair of eyes are set on you. You have to introduce yourself to the class, what’s your name, where you’re from, what you plan to teach, when you plan to teach, what grade you plan to teach among other things while you’re kinda awkwardly standing in front of the room wearing a suit. After which I sat down in a chair in the back of the class, the only one not taken. The topic was social studies, which was my favorite and best class when I was in school and now my major in college (history). Every minute or so a student would turn around toward me and smile and wave.

            The teacher, unlike the elementary school, did not use a smartboard but instead used a projector. The technology was sufficient for what they were covering in class but nothing fancy like the elementary school where the students were using iPad. I can’t help but think of what the students going into middle school will think when there is no smartboard or iPad in class. The way this next generation is coming up it might be a little bit of a shock. The students didn’t have text books either, given that Dr. Parker and Dr. Clark already told us that, it still surprises me. I’ve always had text books in every class I’ve had since kindergarten with the exception of EDU 250. The teacher would give the students pages containing maps, questions, and definitions on them that they would glue into their notebooks. The students would answer the questions using the information that they went over in class as well as look over their other notes from the beginning of the year to solve the problems. The teacher went over the answers after a given amount of time when the students finished. The teacher though didn’t just go over the answers but would choose at random for someone to answer and back up their answer. If they got it wrong then it would go into discussion between the students and the one who got the answer right and could back up their claim got their choice from a bag of candy. Rewarding a student with candy for the right answer is an interesting way of how to possibly increase a student’s attention in class. I would assume though that after a while that this would get “old” and lose its effectiveness after the first half of the year. The teacher would have students connect what they’re learning now in class with what they learned since the first day. It would seem that the teacher is tying together everything over the course of the whole semester. The subject no longer becomes something that a student memorizes for one test but that they will constantly be referring back to.

The students would get a bit rowdy every now and then to which the teacher would quite them down and explain that “we have a guest” and should act respectful. I didn’t think about it till then that I felt like she was trying too hard to control the class and I also got the feeling that this was not a typical thing and that she was trying to control the class because they had a “guest.” This is perfectly understandable to want to set a good impression because you’re being observed. I’d rather see the whole thing though the good and the bad. Class rarely always goes according to plan and students are not always on their best behavior. I’d rather see the good and the bad of an everyday class, to know what I’m getting myself into in a few years.

           The class had the lights off but had smaller lights around the room enough that students could see what they’re reading and writing. The lamps were not fluorescent, like at government buildings and Walmart, but were warm lights, like at coffee shops. It felt more relaxed than some other classes I’ve been in. The walls were not painfully bright white. Instead the walls were covered with maps and boards and pictures with warm colors that went along with the lighting of the room. It was not too bright that would make you feel like you’re at the DMV or the interrogation room but it was not too dark that you could fall asleep it was in between where you felt comfortable. The learning environment is one thing that we have not gone over in class that I think is incredibly important to the learning experience.

Overall it was an interesting experience and I preferred it to the elementary school visit. The students weren’t always obedient and things didn’t always go according to plan; which to me made it feel more authentic. Referring back to previous subjects that it stays relevant in the students mind, coming up with ways to help students seek their own improvement, and creating a good learning environment were the three main things I came away with and stuck with me in this class.

An Observation

Well this Monday we finally got set out on a trip to the elementary school. All I can say is this “man time flies.” I felt like we did not spend enough time in the class.

The teacher it seemed gave off a sense that she was someone to be respected. The students did what was asked of them without any complications. The teacher handled one situation in which one of the students was running in class, which is against classroom rules, simply and without making a big deal about it. She did not raise her voice but simply reminded the student that he’s not supposed to do that; the student walked back to his table then walked back to where he was running to. It was interesting that within the first five minutes of class the teacher had established what they were going to be doing that day and broke the class up into groups and everyone went their way to the station they we assigned.

Sydney and Daniela jumped right into it with helping out the students at their stations. I am a little bit more laid back and mostly just observed what was going on. But somehow I missed a lot of things in the class. Sydney and Daniela who were busy helping students caught things I hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t until we reconvened out of class when we were talking about what we observed that I realized how much I missed. I hadn’t noticed that the teacher was simultaneously teaching students at one station while also keeping track of the students at the other station. The teacher used new technology to enhance the learning experience of the students but not relying too much on it; that in my opinion could also hinder learning if used too much. The room was much more spread out and colorful and not dull and cramped.

Teachers need to be able to multitask, observe and keep track of their students, and help each individual student understand the content. I feel like I need to work on this much more if I want to be able to teacher a class. Working for RFKC has helped me tremendously but I still need to sharpen my skills in this area.

The things that I noticed happened outside the classroom unfortunately they were, at least in my opinion, not positive. I overheard a conversation that they still had silent lunches and the other I observed that students were accompanied by teachers everywhere they go and in straight lines without talking. Maybe it’s just me but I remember when they first implemented this in my elementary school.

We were not accompanied by teachers everywhere we went, we didn’t have to go everywhere in a straight line, and we could talk at lunch without being told only students who didn’t “act up” could talk. The best way I can put it is that it was a lot like high school for kids. Kids in middle school would always talk about going into high school like a prison mate talks about getting out of jail. The student was entrusted with more freedoms without having teachers constantly monitoring them. In the same way that was how my elementary school was.

Then one year we were told that we to be accompanied by a teacher everywhere we went, always in a straight line with a finger over our lips and with cameras lining every hall every ten yards. We were never allowed to talk at lunch and if we did there was a teacher with a bad temper with a megaphone yelling at us and we were not allowed to go out to our twenty minute recess. They also enforced a strict dress code that if broken you were not allowed to go into the school. They also introduced new strict word bans and anyone who broke them, even if they were just joking, was severely punished.  

This is the main reason why my family moved to the other side of the state, for a better education. Education is so incredibly important that people will move to another part of the state they live in or to another part of the country for their child’s education. This is not a small or light thing to talk about. I know I sometimes focus too much on the negative instead of the positive. After reading so many blogs about our experiences almost every one of them had positive and enlightening thoughts on what we observed but I feel like someone has to say something negative, to give a different view point on the subject. This is the reason I sometimes act so hostile towards schools when I see them implementing anything that resembles what my own school did. School is supposed to be a place of learning, a place where a student shouldn’t have to be afraid that he may say or do something against “policy” that will get him into a lot of trouble. School is supposed to be a comfortable and safe place to learn not a prison to escape from.

Anchor

This week has probably been the hardest week I’ve had in a long time. Four tests, five projects, a hundred pages of studying terms I can’t even pronounce, and the urge to put all of them off and do nothing. I’m up to my neck in projects, tests, and research studying but no one said life was easy. I think when times are tough and you are being tested physically and mentally on a regular basis it’s important to have something to hold on to that renews your determination to come up on top otherwise we crumble.

Why are we doing this? There are plenty of others jobs out there, why this one? We could have taken an easier journey, the one most traveled.

We knew to challenges, or we do now, so what do we do with it?

What is it that will keep us moving forward when we face the first sign of resistance? This is just the first wave, they get bigger as we move forward.

Many of us know or have an obscure notion of why we chose this path. It’s important to never forget it. And it needs to be a good reason, a strong one to stand against the cold winds that blow hard on our faces as we climb this mountain.

They say being a teacher is not a job it is an art. It is not reading from the approved text and blandly reading it word for word hoping the students will just “get it.” Plutarch says that “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited.” We are to be the match that lights the fire.

It wasn’t until recently after these questions came to my mind that I found that thing that we hold onto when times get tough. For everyone it is different, for some it is their love of children, others it is a sense of duty, mine is a bit different. Mine is fear, a fear for the future and the future generations. It has become common for many students to accept ideas and teachings without question. I watched a hidden video of a class at the University of California where a student stood up and said to the professor “just tell me what to believe and I’ll believe it even if it doesn’t make sense” to which all the student shook their heads in agreement. I’ve seen similar videos before at other universities as well. Maybe it’s just me, I’m a bit paranoid sometimes, but I fear the surrender of our free will and individuality. But I hold on to this and it helps me when days are hard to know why I’m here and why I’m doing this.

As teachers we carry one of the biggest burdens knowing that we are responsible for teaching the next generation. They will make the laws, run the businesses, and teach the generation after them in a long and unending cycle. We carry this burden. There are days when I frown when I see some of these people in schools we call teachers and then there days when I see our own class and the students in it who will become teachers and smile.

TTLF Tonight Show

            Hello and welcome you’re tuning into Teacher: The Last Frontier. I’m your host Dalton Blackmon and I’m joined today by my colleague Augustus Phluareo. Last week on TTLF we reported on the future of teaching and technology this week we will be reviewing the last two hours of today’s debate in Class 250.

DB: Now Augustus we heard today from Mrs. Johnson about her views on grading in class. She says that maybe we should do away with participation grades.

AP: You know I couldn’t agree more

DB: Why’s that?
AP: Teacher’s today, thanks to government bureaucracy, no longer care if their students actually retain the information. As long as students just show up to class they will get an A, it doesn’t even matter if they are actually paying attention in class. You get an A for just being alive and sitting in a seat!

DB: Can you blame them? The state and federal government require these teachers to prove that their students are learning and the easiest way to do that is show them that they are passing the class. And while we’re in the generation of short attention spans the teachers are having a hard time getting these students to pay attention. And there are quotas they have to fill in order for the school to get a paycheck. I’m not saying its right but can you blame them?

AP: I’ll admit that it’s also the duty of the parents to discipline their kids to do their homework and study and pay attention in class. But some of the blame lies on the teachers. Many of these teachers are using outdated teaching techniques to teach their students. The techniques they’re trying to teacher these students is thirty years old! This generation of kids doesn’t learn the same way you and I learned back in the day! These teachers need to adapt to the needs of their students! Make what they’re learning interesting and relevant!

DB: Like allowing students to use iPads and laptops to do class work and turn in homework?

AP: Exactly. You know I had a friend of mine’s son went to a psychology class and one of the things his teacher made the class do is wear a blind fold the next day. From the moment the students entered school in the morning till they got to his class, whether it was their first class or their last class. Every student had a friend guide them from class to class all day and stumbled around the halls. The whole thing was for the students to get into the mind of a blind person and feel what it was like to be blind. Then they wrote a paper on their experiences and explain what they had learned. That right there is making the learning experience interesting and relevant.

DB: I wish I had that teacher mine just made us read a textbook and complete some multiple choice questions. Alright moving on to our next subject. Mr. Peterson went even farther with this in saying that we should reconsider putting in homework into the student’s overall final class grade. Your thoughts?

AP: I don’t know if I agree with him on this. Homework is a way to test to see where a student is in their learning.

DB: I agree with him in part. A lot of students as soon as they leave the class will get together and will give each other the answers. The whole point of homework is to challenge the students to study, know, and comprehend the information. If these students are all cheating off of each other’s paper it has destroyed the whole point of having homework.

AP: Well what the alternative?

DB: Okay let me detour here so I can explain it more clearly. There are some teachers that will give their students points on tests for putting their names on the paper.

AP: What? No, that’s absurd I’ve never heard of that before.

DB: Well it’s true.

AP: I don’t believe that.

DB: Nonetheless it happens. Back to what I was saying; I think, as I think most people will agree with me, it should not add points to their grade. Most schools will not add points to the student’s grade but they will subtract it from their grade. Because its common place it’s expected of you, you shouldn’t get points for just writing your name down. I think in the same way doing your homework should also be commonplace. I don’t think students should get points added to their final grade for doing their homework but the students should get points off their final grade for not doing the homework.

AP: Well that’s not going to stop people from cheating. It would only remove the reward for cheating but not the incentive. By cheating they would only escape punishment for not doing the work themselves. To escape punishment is still an incentive.

DB: Well that’s where we would have to redefine what homework is for. Today homework is just another tool used by the school or some politician to brag about their program. It would be like saying that the school has ninety seven percent of its students passing and graduating but the percentage of students who actually learned something and retained the information for years later the percentage would be more like thirty percent. Homework is for their, the students, benefit. The homework is supposed to be a tool for the teacher to see what information the student has retained and how the student learns. It’s like a survey; you fill out the questionnaire and give it back to the person who gave it to you. The surveyor then reads over the questionnaires and the answers everyone put and he gets a general idea of the consensus among the population. In a similar way the teacher gets a consensus of how the class as a whole is progressing but also how the individual is progressing. It is meant to inform the teacher of how the individual students learn so that the teacher can adapt and or help the student to understand better.

AP: That’s not the only thing that would have to change. Many of these students get very easy A, B, C style questions on their homework. It’s a cookie cutter style of homework.

DB: One size does not sit all.

AP: Exactly, every one of these students is different when it comes to learning. These students aren’t being trained to think critically; they’re being trained how to “memorize” some stuff for their tests and when it comes to take the test they just spit out whatever the teacher told them. After that they won’t be tested on it again and they won’t remember any of it.

DB: I agree, my friend a few years back was in college and had a chemistry class at Kennesaw State and on the first day the professor told his class that even if they got hundreds on all their tests that would only account for sixty percent of their final grade. The other forty percent was the final where they were given a list of scenarios where they would have to apply their knowledge of all the content they had studied and think critically to pass the exam. The professor did not count the homework as part of the final grade but counted it as preparation for the final.

AP: I don’t think that would fly in almost any school.

DB: I know but it is an interesting concept.

AP: Well it looks like that’s all we’ve got time to talk about. We’ll be back after the break but first a word from of sponsor.

Back To The Future... Or Something Like That

From what I saw and heard today it looked like a lot of minds in class were boggled and or blown. The idea that kindergarteners are learning in school on iPads is in my opinion a bit unexpected. Most of us in class remember when there weren’t any computers in the classrooms and when we still used projectors. It seems like technology is moving so fast that we can’t keep up with all of it. We would need to be learning more about technology that is being developed and won’t even be on the market for four more years in order to be ready for teaching in two years. The teaching styles that were used to teach us is ten years obsolete; the teaching styles used to teach us right now will be in only a very few years also obsolete. The fact of how students are being taught right now is on equal or superior footing than how we’re being taught.

This new generation that came after us, the ones we will be teaching, is so fast paced and its refusal to stand still for only a moment creates a real challenge for us. What do we do now? How will we compete? We will have to be on our toes and always be ahead of the curve or else we will fall behind and will be replaced by someone that can keep up.

This can be disheartening but we don’t have the luxury to back down and quit, it’s too late for that; we’ve made our choice now it’s time to step up and honor it.

It is sometimes scary to see things pass right by you in the blink of an eye. After hearing what has been going on in the academic world in the now and a few years down the road it is scary what lies not too far from now. Schools are now having students use iPads to do tests, quizzes, and homework on. This is so vastly different from our own upbringing and studies. I have always been an old school kind of guy with holding an actual book in my hand, doing my tests and homework on paper, etc. This is somewhat frightening to hear that all of that has been thrown out the window.

They are now having students doing their homework, tests, quizzes, and classwork on iPads. From there it will become the normal thing for schools and will be all over the nation from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Next it will move to where some schools will incorporate a virtual class where students don’t even need to be in a school building. A few years after that it will also become the normal thing for schools. From there school as we know it, a building with teachers and principals and students all under one roof, will be obsolete. The new class room will be comprised of one teacher and thirty students all broadcast from their computers from every corner of the country. There will be no need for even a school building and so they will cease to be used for educational purposes. They will be left to rot or they will be repurposed into offices, stores, etc.

The entirety of the hierarchy of the school system will most likely change drastically. Many of the offices and positions in schools today will not be necessary for “schools.” Instead what will happen is that teachers will instead of being interviewed by the principal or someone else in the school; they will be interviewed by their future student’s parents via video cam. Teachers will of course be required to renew their teaching licenses and will be subject to monthly check ups by some authority. This is scary to some future teachers knowing that they will have to persuade parents to in a sense “hire them” to teach their kids. This provides a less stable source of income that is why it would frighten many upcoming teachers. Being a teacher would be more like being a business man. Having to convince a possible buyer, i.e. the parents, to pay for a service you offer, that is teaching their children.

We’ve all had that one awful teacher who nobody liked and who couldn’t wait till Friday to get their check and they could get away from “us.” Remember that teacher? I do, but no matter what you or your parents said or did could change that or get rid of that teacher. With this business-like run school that could change. It worries future teachers for the above reasons and for the reasons I don’t have time to mention but this puts their student’s education in the parents hands. Parents would have more say on their child’s education; that also includes these future teacher’s own children. This could also give the power of the parent and the teacher to negotiate payment. This could help weed out those teachers that only go into teaching for a steady paycheck. It would require teachers to stay on their game and master their content of teaching and present it masterfully to the students. To the teacher that goes into this job with a passion in their heart to help their students learn and that want to ignite that spark in the minds of their students; this change just might help not only their careers but future generations.

Just Another Day In Paradise

Well here we are again only five days into our classes and I’m starting to feel the pressure of all my class requirements. Last Friday I felt like an atomic bomb went off and I was caught in the blast radius. That day we went to a three hour meeting about what we have to get done this semester. We got a free diner for coming which was good especially the chips; I’m sure that was everyone’s favorite. We then proceeded to go through all the requirements for this semester and next. There was form after form to be filled out and sent in and the multiple tests that I will have to cough up five hundred dollars for, give or take. Not to mention the blogs, like this one, the essays, tests, quizzes, study guides, teaching a class, and so on. I felt like I was about to lose my mind about how much I had on my plate. So what does a guy do to get all this off his mind? He watches violent action movies with giant explosions while drinking sweet tea and eating Slim Jims of course.

This week we were given an assignment to make an infomercial about the teaching philosophy we were assigned. I got the Realist philosophy. It was founded by Aristotle, so I’m gonna have to read and research his writings. In order to understand him you have to understand his teacher Plato. This is great though since I’m covering Aristotle and Plato in my history class. My roommate loves philosophy, especially Plato, so if I ever get confused I know I have someone who can help me make sense of it. I’m actually looking forward to this project but I’m gonna need to work on my tech skills since this project revolves around my teammates and I being able to use some new tech we’re never used before. Besides the tech challenge I’m feeling optimistic about this assignment.

What lies ahead

After a week of classes, navigating the new schedule, and figuring out how to juggle my class schedule and my private time, EDUC 250 comes as a breath of fresh air. Talking about the five standards of the NCTCS is a bit overwhelming but I am thankful that to some level I am familiar with some of them. Particularly the one pertaining to diversity in learning differences as well as students who come from different backgrounds some of which are not good. Working with the We Foster ministries, RFKC, and Xtreme Life has given me some insight on children who come from rough family lives. In the last three years my family has had four kids living with us in our home. At one point or another I helped each one in their classes with all of them having different learning skills, capabilities, and handicaps. This forced me to adapt new teaching techniques for each of their different learning styles. I know that there is still so much more to learn just in this specific area and the other four but I am thankful that it gave me a taste of what to expect in the future.

What I have not given much thought to until now is how teaching has changed and how much it will change by the time I get my own class room. The ability to adapt to the times, as it pertains to technology, is something I have never been strong at but now I see it as failure to adapt to the changing world of teaching will mean the difference between having a job or losing it. After attending this class for only a few days it has solidified my belief that this is not a class in which you can show up to class and not get involved in discussions; this is not a class in which you can just go through the motions. What we are learning will be the cornerstone of our future careers in teaching for forty or more years. What we do now in these next two years will define our future and who we will become.