What is the purpose of schooling?

 

The purpose of schooling should be to enrich and shape the minds of the youth to prepare them to become functioning adults in society. The youth should be taught basic skills such as reading, and basic arithmetics, as well as social skills and lessons on how to navigate with people their own age and teachers (an authority figure).

 

What is my image of the learner?

 

My image of the learner is a wide-eyed youth who is eager to absorb new information. I believe the learner is not a blank slate as a lot of fundamental lessons have been covered or not covered at home and it can pre-shape certain aspects of a person. A learner is someone who is prepared to be taught new things and has an open mind when it comes to being shown new methods of doing a task.

 

What should the nature and substance of student work?

 

Students should be given assignments that allow them to be creative and learn with an open mind. Grades are necessary, but the way a teacher goes about grading can be adjusted. The way the work should look is tailored to every individual, and it shouldn’t have one set way of look. The purpose of work should be to challenge and expand the minds of the student who is completing the work. Busy work shouldn’t be given just to fill the grade book up with little points along the way because it teaches the students that some of their work does not matter. 

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What is your image of the teacher?

 

My image of the teacher is a person who is willing to sacrifice their time to shape the minds of the youth and be patient enough to watch them grow into functioning members of society. A teacher can be anyone, male or female, I believe being a teacher is a prestigious job because no matter someone’s profession down the line, they have to go through basic schooling, and it is up to the teacher to shape he/ or she’s foundational years. 

 

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What is your image of the curriculum?

 

My image of the curriculum is a set of topics one must complete before the end of the school year. It is a predefined outline of what one must do in their classroom, and while it can be a good guide of what one needs to get done, one should not just follow what the curriculum has to say. The curriculum has one end goal in mind and that is state testing, and this is not what education should be focused on. 

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What is the preferred pedagogy?

 

I believe that inquiry-centered teaching is the most effective. Students should feel like they have a say and that their opinions are heard. There needs to be structure in the classroom set up by the teacher at the “head” but the students should get a say especially if the teacher is doing something they think is good, but no one thinks it is. I don’t think the students should think they have more power than the teacher because they do not, the teacher is in charge of the learning and safety of the children, but they can still have a say.

 

What is the preferred school climate?

 

I believe an effective learning community is one where the students feel like their voices are being heard and they are accomplishing things in their learning. Education is important but so is developing social skills, I think a good environment for developing social skills is also important in a preferred school climate. I believe certain things in a school climate are unpredictable, and certain things are pre-dictated based on the location of the school itself. My attitude is about disciplining school pride should be that everyone should be happy to go to school, and take pride in their work. Faculty and community members need to instill this in children and make them feel like they’ve entered a second home.

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What is the social significance of the students learning?

 

I believe the goal of student learning should be to become productive citizens in the world. To be a productive citizen One must be well informed of what’s happening around them, they must understand where they’ve come from to understand where they are going. This is not a task that is completed through the curriculum, rather through the lessons each teacher instills within their classroom.

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1. Background of the situation (where, what, and who?)

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a. A fellow student and I completed a class presentation which mimicked how we would teach a unit to a group of students in a creative and interactive way. 
 

b. The setting was within our EDT 246 classroom. 
 

c. My fellow co-presenter and I were given the role of the teachers for an entire class period. She and I were split into two groups, she with one half of the class, me with the other. Within these smaller groups, we shared the exact same presentation, completed the same activities, and used similar discussion questions.

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2. A teaching moment (what happened?)

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A teachable moment from this presentation would be to make sure you either have notes for cross-reference or have the acronym you are attempting to use as an example memorized. I attempted to use SCUBA as a metaphor for how we memorize things, and when I went to state what SCUBA stood for I could not remember. Luckily, one of the students I was presenting to knew what I was trying to say and then shared with the rest of the group what SCUBA stood for. From this teachable moment, I will always remember that SCUBA stands for “Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.” For me, this was a perfect example of how teachers can learn from their students, but if one of my students had not known this information it could have left the group confused with the example I was trying to convey.

 

Throughout my presentation, I felt prepared and ready to answer questions that may have my way while teaching. My co-presenter and I had practiced how long we intended to stay on each slide, while allowing wiggle room for the students to comment on the information, or ask further questions if they needed clarification. The students I presented to completed each activity which we had prepared thoroughly and thoughtfully. Every student engaged with the material they were given and appeared to be enjoying it while doing so. One activity the students completed was titled the “Heart Activity” outside of class we had prepared large pink hearts made from poster board for the students to fold every time they heard a negative word within the short story we were going to had to them. The premise of this activity was to show that no matter how hard you try to smooth out your heart after you’ve made a fold, you cannot completely make the mark disappear. While this activity was for a target audience much younger than college students, they still appeared to be enjoying the activity while completing it. 

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3. Reflection

 

The presentation my fellow peer and I completed would be considered a success. On the actual presentation day, I felt things went smoothly and she and I had practiced and coordinated enough of the “ins and outs” of our work to make the presentation go smoothly. When we broke down our lesson plan the main goals we wanted to achieve were for the class to have a deeper understanding of our specific chapter, and for them to gain insight about how affectiveness is an abstract concept. 

Overall, I was pleased with our partnership and that she and I successfully created a presentation which surpassed our initial goals. Personally, I feel that presentations must look aesthetically pleasing in order to engage the audience, luckily she was on the same wavelength as I was and had already begun designing ideas for what our slide deck would look like. We had chosen to use a graphic organizer to conduct our final assessment because it was pleasing to look at, coincided with our presentation in an organized way, and became engaging to work with rather than a regular sheet of paper.

If I were to go back-in-time and change one thing it would be that we would have presented to the entire class, and not in small groups. Something about presenting to only seven of my classmates felt strange, and having my partner back to back with me sharing the exact same set of information to the other half of the class just seemed off. Aside from this, there isn’t anything I would change in terms of the project itself. 

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