Reflection 9

I appreciate what our last two speakers at seminar have shared with us.

The man from last week was insightful as far as he gave me a future employer's point of view. I learned that the best ways I can show how good of a teacher I am to principals in my first initial interviews is through my relationships with those who are there to teach me and guide me. Now, those relationships are positively and negatively affected by two things: normal relationship dynamics (friendliness, mutual respect, sincerity, etc.) and my ability to learn and improve in my teaching. This means that I need to form good relationships with my professors and my student teaching mentor as well as work hard to progress and improve in my teaching.

Another thing he touched on which is also what was most impactful from today's speaker was the idea of love for the students. Both speakers advised very bluntly and adamantly that nobody should go into teaching if (s)he doesn't love it and love the students. Last week we heard that if we didn't hate the job but didn't love the students, then "the students would make sure we hated the job." This week we heard that we already have too many teachers that didn't even like kids, and yet they were still teaching. This reminds me of what Braden said to me about teachers complaining about their wages, "You mean you didn't know about that before you got into the job? Why would you ever jump into a career when you had no idea what you were going to be doing?"
"Change your major today if you don't think you'll like working with students!" I can see how this advice could be discouraging to someone people. Obviously this major does a lot more than prepare you to teach, but nonetheless, it's important to think about if you were planning to teach, but also knew you weren't going to enjoy the actual teaching part. Luckily for me, I know I'm in the right place and that advice is more encouraging to me than discouraging.

Reflection 8

I'm enjoying this latest book we're reading. It's research-based teaching methods. Boom! Definitely keeping this book around for reference. 

Ok, so Braden Boss talked to me about something when I went to his class. He said that nothing currently prepares students for the politics that go on among teachers at schools. Braden talked about how surprised he was when he started teaching and the more senior teachers would complain about how little money they were making. "Really? You didn't know you were going to get paid that much before you started teaching?" he said. When he chose not to participate in the complaining, he said he got a lotta hatin' from the other teachers. He stopped hanging out in the teacher's lounge because he got tired of the negativity. He decided that he would be a better teacher if he didn't spend his time with other teachers that complained about their jobs.

Anyways, even though this sounds like grown-up playground drama, it's interesting to me how it obviously still happens, even for adults. The moral of the story that I got was that it would be helpful for me, even if I do collaborate with other teachers, it would be good for me to avoid a dependency on other's approval.

I'm enjoying the STL teaching. Probably because we have more time to teach, but I'm hoping to have a spectacular lesson. 

Reflection 7

I learned something important from my observation yesterday. I would love to have the workspace and equipment available to me as a welding and wood shop teacher, but I wouldn't like teaching it as much as i would multimedia subjects. I feel like I can communicate good values better if I am teaching in a field where I already communicate my personal values.

As far as a teaching philosophy goes, I have learned that it is very important for me to know that I am improving people. I remember teachers of mine who were more interested in teaching me to be a better person than they were in teaching me the subject they were supposed to teach. Those were the classes that I learned and developed the most in. I will have to incorporate that into my teaching philosophy somehow.

I recently read a blog post of some guy bashing public schools pretty hard in favor of homeschooling. His main thesis was that public schools are owned by the government and therefore can only teach the values that the government wants people to learn. He spent a considerable amount of time discussing how the government's job is to keep its citizen's in subjection; therefore, public schools can only promote this goal, that there is nothing else they can do; therefore, homeschooling was the only way to combat this. Now, I'm a mixed bag in this subject. I was home schooled, public schooled, and other schooled. I've grown to appreciate lots of different teaching/learning methods and I've come to hate lots of the same. One thing this blogger doesn't bother to do is confront the fact that some parents do not care about their child's education. If it was left up to everyone to educate their children on their own, then the majority of children would go without an education of any kind. I still believe that if we still believe that everyone has a right/responsibility to get education, then we have to put up with a system that isn't efficient, that doesn't grade students effectively, that struggles to meet everyone's needs, that doesn't focus on the individual's needs simply because there are too many individuals to focus on. Mass education is good, but there are certain things that we have to sacrifice if we still want it. Can things be improved? Sure. Can processes become more efficient? Sure. Can we teach better values in public education than we already are? Sure, but better values can only be legislated to a point. This is why I want to teach, because I think students who don't have parents who care about what they're learning have someone who cares. So that values that are missing at home or in their other classes can find them in mine.

Highschool Observation 2

I visited Jared Massic at Maple Mountain High School. He had a hard-working class culture. I enjoyed seeing how he implemented the district's requirements in his class. It was a requirement that all the students keep track of their time working on projects, so Jared installed a time punch machine in his classroom for his students to use. Before starting any of their welding projects they would "punch in"as if they were at a job and then end the period by "punching out." You could tell that he was always concerned about implementing the industry perspective in his curriculum because of things like this. He also graded his students as if he was the boss of a company and his students were his employees. If he felt like a student would normally get fired for showing a lack of work ethic, then he gave the student a failing grade. I thought this was effective because it helped the students learn industry standards while in school. 

High School Observation 1

I visited Braden Boss at Springville High School. I arrived in the middle of one of his upper-level video classes. They have lots of great video equipment and everyone has a fully-functioning computer to edit video on. This was a well-organized and well-respected classroom. I enjoyed the amount of freedom he gave to his students to think creatively about an assignment; he gave some inspiration, then guidance, and then time with each group to brainstorm and collaborate. After class let out, I had the opportunity to sit and talk with Braden for about half an hour during his prep period. He gave me materials from his class that he provides for his students and explained his teaching philosophy for his students. I really enjoyed learning about his perspective on teaching because he took it seriously. Teaching video was not something he put a good effort into. He put 100% into his teaching which meant that he was also willing to look past normal conventions in order to help his students learn and value the material they were learning. A few highlights that stuck out to me were:

• Don't whine, complain, or worry about the things you have no control over as a teacher (salary, politics, etc.)
• Fulfill the requirements placed on you as a teacher that don't get in the way of teaching effectively. (e.g. Braden had the "I can..." statements posted on the wall of his class because it was required, but he didn't mind because it didn't stop him from teaching the way he wanted.)
• Don't bother associating with bad teachers, especially those who whine and complain about their jobs. 
• There's "teachers" and then there are "teachers of _________". Teachers are people that just got jobs teaching because it was a job they felt they could do, while teachers of __________ are passionate about their subject of choice and find it important to hand down that passion to their students.

I admired his dedication to the welfare of his students and his desire to teach effectively regardless of what other's thought of him. He was a little overly angsty about all this though and he obviously had some baggage with the school administration he was not at peace with yet, but nonetheless, he is a teacher I would want as a student.

Jr. High Observation 2

There's a theory called the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) that states that people are generally persuaded in two different ways. There's the Central route, which consists of reasoning with facts, figures, and logic. Then there is the peripheral route, which involves impressions of credibility based on image, tone, presentation quality, etc... I visited Brett Christiansen's class. He seemed very busy and preoccupied with some paperwork that must have been under a tight deadline. His relationship with the student seemed a bit more peripheral in nature than Jesse. His students were supposed to do certain assignments because he told them to or because it was required of them rather than providing and reenforcing the value of the skills they were learning. Another example of his peripheral route teaching method was that he commanded attention by a loud and sharp voice. It seemed the students were used to this, but that they had also grown accustomed to ignoring this approach as well since they have probably reached an age where they start questioning peripheral messaging techniques in favor of more central route messaging. It was valuable to attend Brett's class because he was managed his class successfully, helped his students reach goals and finish assignments, but failed (at least for that particular day) to teach the value of those assignments to the students. I'm no expert and can't judge too harshly because it could have just been an abnormally hectic day for Brett and an unusually good day for Jesse, but the experience was nonetheless valuable for me.

Jr. High Observation 1

I went to visit Jesse Carter's class. I liked how engaged his students were in the assignment they had. None were noticeably off task, though some seemed more ahead in the assignment than others. Jesse had a joking/sarcastic relationship with the students on a general level. When he addressed the class as a whole, he would often make jokes about some of the students for everyone to laugh at. On an individual level, he was kind and focussed. One student specifically asked for his help because he couldn't progress in the assignment without some guidance. Unfortunately Jesse got sidetracked by a hoard of other students also asking for help, and he forgot to help the first student. Eventually class let out and the students packed up and began to leave. The student approached Jesse on his way out the door reminding Jesse that he still needed help. Jesse, remembering that he had promised to assist the student quickly apologized for breaking that promise and said that it was wrong of him to do so, then promising he'd help him the next day. I liked this because, though jesse has a jovial relationship with his students, he found a way to balance that with expressing his concern with the students' individual success.