My first big takeaway from class is the idea of developmental stages. Developmental stages are the cornerstone of developmental research. It gives the layout so that all information can be fit into categories regarding developmental traits and tendencies among ages. My second big takeaway from the class is associating play with learning at a younger age. It is a bad thing what is put onto very young children currently and play should be implemented more in kindergarten and 4-k classrooms. I think it’s an important idea that has gone away lately and it should be looked at again to find the importance of play. The third big idea from class is the idea of milestones in development. It is an easy way to tell if children are behind where they are supposed to be and these milestones can help tell if a student needs extra help. Another big takeaway is prenatal development, this is because it is a time of development that I think many people don’t understand. I learned that there is a lot more going on during the prenatal period than I thought and it brought to light the importance of the prenatal period. My fifth big takeaway was during my sophomore block placement looking at distractibility in students. Being able to see the different tendencies between developmental stages and looking at the different milestones that we had talked about was interesting to see in action inside a classroom. The sixth big takeaway, I think was during class learning about TBI’s during my research project. TBI’s are very misunderstood throughout the world and I felt like the information that I learned is very helpful especially if I run into a student that has a TBI in my classroom. Another takeaway is during my placement I was able to teach a lesson in class. While not fully relating to development I was able to teach a lesson during my placement and I think that was an important part of class. I got some feedback and will continue to improve my lesson plans as I go along my teaching career. My eighth takeaway is the changes that happen to students and their development during puberty. Wanting to teach in the age range where students will be during or near the end of puberty learning about what they may be going through developmentally is important to how I will have to teach. For my ninth takeaway,y I think the idea of identity in development is very important. Many kids struggle with finding identity and I think that understanding what they are going through when trying to find their identity can help a lot when creating relationships with students. If as a teacher I don’t understand what the students may be going through it will be impossible to create relationships and having an idea of their struggles is very helpful. My final takeaway is just the importance of understanding what development is and the fact that it is always changing and students are always changing. It means that as an educator I must be flexible and understand that my students are going to change over the school year. As long as I understand that I will be a much more successful educator than those who choose to ignore that.
This week was the last week of my sophomore block placement. It has been a very good experience and the final week has been very interesting. They had a switch in the trimester and new classes began this week. I was able to be part of teaching a lesson during this week and it went quite well. I had high student engagement and they said that the information made sense as I explained it. I have really enjoyed my sophomore block experience. I have made some very good connections with the students and I am truly sad to go. I have learned a lot not only about the students, but this experience has also solidified that I want to be a teacher and teach in a high school classroom. Over the past 4 weeks, I have learned a lot about being developmentally appropriate. Being in a high school environment with kids of different ages at different developmental points has been very interesting. Each student needs to be met at a different level and the idea of meeting them where they are becomes very important. Students may have similar situations to each other when it comes to a struggle, however, based on who that student is and where they are developmentally, changes how I have had to approach situations. I have been able to learn how to help and teach in a classroom when there are students at different levels of development. The best ability that I have found is to be adaptive and understand that some students may be going through some sort of change. Especially with the younger students many of them are going through a change in development or on the tail end of a period of large change. This means that there will be ups and downs when it comes to how they are feeling and the development level. Being adaptive and meeting them where they are to take some of that stress and make whatever they are trying to do more adaptive to them is the best thing possible.
This week, a lot happened at school. It was event night, an open house event where the community could come and see the projects the students had been completing. Many of the students had some moments of panic realizing that they had to get a lot done on their projects before event night. On the other hand, many of the students had planned and were nearly done with their projects, but they only had a little that they needed to accomplish this week besides preparing for presenting during event night. However, it was a big success and the students did a fantastic job in presenting their projects to the community. It was awesome to see all of their hard work come to a close and see them show off the work that they had been doing for the past twelve weeks. One developmental idea that we talked about during class was the idea of students being able to think ahead into the future about work. Some students who are not as far along the developmental track struggle with planning for things such as projects. This was shown as some students who were further along the developmental track had a plan out for the week so that they would be prepared for event night. Others had yet to prepare a plan and were going day by day, panicking when they realized that they had yet to do anything just a few days before the event night. The idea of thinking ahead long into the future while still being focused on the task at hand is complicated. Many of the students are starting to develop this skill, however many of them are still figuring out the time management. Like I said though all of the students did a fantastic job and were able to present at event night.
As I have observed my classroom I have noticed many different things relating to distractibilty in students. I have a wide range of students in my classes from seniors in high school all the way down to sixth graders in middle school. When I notice distractibility the first thing to notice is the technology, the students have to use technology as their computers is how they get most of their work done, however this can be a problem as getting distracted on a computer is very easy. I am constantly having to tell them to focus on their schoolwork as they find many games and other things to do on their computers that isn’t the classwork. I also notice that there are many kids that get distracted by noise. Some kids it does not bother at all, they can be in a very loud enviornment and still be very productive and get their work done. Some students, need the class to be almost silent for them to be able to focus as loud noises can be overstimulating for them and they struggle with focusing around them. I also notice this with to much movement going around in the room. Some students struggle to focus while there is movement going on in front of them. Things like another student tossing a pecil to another or people constantly walking back and forth in front of them. They focus on that rather than focusing on the work that they are trying to accomplish. I belive that the general lack of focus shows more in the younger students. The older students tend to be able to sit down and accomplish work for longer periods of time before having to take a break.
My school setting is a high school social studies classroom and high school advisement group. Many behaviors indicate the students’ development. One of the factors is how they interact socially with other students in the classroom. There are some kids that I have seen that do not have good conflict-resolution skills. Conflict resolution is a later developed idea within the mind which means that some students are not fully developed. The problems with conflict resolution are more often shown in younger students, freshmen, and sophomores, while I have seen a few disputes be settled easily with students who are a little bit older than the juniors and seniors. Another observation I have made that indicates levels of development is the different levels of identity that each student has. I have been able to have at least one conversation with every student in class. Some of the students have a deeper understanding of who they are and what their aspirations are in life. They have talked to me about life plans, things they believe in, and how they feel, while others don’t seem to have those types of things figured out. They are developing these ideas, however, they are not as far along as the older kids in class. One final piece that I noticed that points to the development of students is how independent they are with their work. Some students excel in working on their own and being able to figure out what they need to do and how they should do it. While others need a bit more of a push than others. Again, these are developing traits that are building, however, some are slightly ahead of others. Generally, the overall actions and decisions being made by many of the students in the class show the development levels of the students. However, the few things I mentioned are very obvious and things that stick out a bit more than others.
An important part of learning in the classroom is understanding the functioning of memory within the brain. Memory is a more complicated subject than just looking at something and having it in your brain. There are many layers to how memory works inside the brain. One of the more important aspects is understanding how a concept goes into working memory before going into long-term memory. When a concept is first introduced it goes into the working memory, this means that it has not yet been fully grasped by the brain. If a concept is just talked about once it is likely that it will go into the working memory and be completely forgotten about as it never had a chance to make its way into the long-term memory. A way of thinking about working memory is thinking about it as someone thinking and being aware of something at that moment. It’s very easy to recall something that somebody just told you as it currently sitting in your working memory. The challenge that teachers face is getting these ideas from the working memory into the long term so that they can then be recalled later. One of the best ways to do this is to have repetition in the classroom. Once a topic has been introduced it’s important to bring it up time and time again. The more that a memory can keep being brought up into the working memory the better chance that it will end up in the long-term memory and can be recalled. Another aspect of memory is being able to call upon a student’s prior knowledge to help introduce new concepts. This is a concept called transferring prior knowledge. If a student can connect prior knowledge to something new that is benign introduced it is much easier for them to understand a new topic. I like to think of it like building a house, you can’t build a house without first working up from the foundation that was put there first. If a foundation can be laid by the student’s background knowledge then teaching new concepts becomes a task of continuing to build rather than starting from scratch. Keeping these things in mind while teaching can help a teacher to be successful in teaching students.
Backward design is one of the most important aspects that a teacher can implement when creating lessons for their students. Backward design is the idea of creating a lesson backward from the conventional way it has always been done. Often teachers started by thinking about the assessment of a topic, once the assessment was completed they would build the lesson by trying to prepare the students for the assessment that they have created. Backward design is flipping that on its head. The first thing thought about is what the students are supposed to learn, or the learning outcome of the lesson. Once the learning outcomes are identified then the way that the learning outcomes are taught is decided. This could be in the form of a game, simulation, lecture, project, etc. Only then is the assessment thought about, when creating the assessment it is also important to look at it in the context of the lesson. It does not have to be a test or paper, it could be the completion of the game and a reflection on what was done. The assessment could be a showing of growth throughout the lesson. What makes backward design so important is that it creates a focus more on getting the students to learn the learning outcomes that the lessons are focusing on rather than just preparing them for a test. It stops the idea of memorizing straight facts to repeat when they get the test at the end of the lesson. It allows for more flexibility as if the assessment is based on the lesson rather than the lesson based on the assessment it can be more flexible to better reflect the learning that was done. While having an idea of what the assessment is going to look like at the start is important, when doing backward design it can not be the first thing decided as it stops creativity and flexibility in lesson planning.
As part of the Village Project program at Nicolet, I have learned a lot. There have been many challenges I have faced that I did not expect and although at times they were difficult I believe that it was good for me to work through these challenges now. My first takeaway that I have from the VP is that students respond best when treated with respect. There were many times that I would see or tell some of the students to do something, and they just would not listen. I noticed that a lot of the time when they didn’t want to listen it was because I or others were sort of talking down to them. While some kids still listened others wanted to be respected by me and once I showed them that respect they were able to reciprocate it. Another takeaway I had was that there are times when things need to be ignored. I noticed especially with the younger kids that they would do some things just to get the attention of one of the teachers. If I or another teacher fed into that and gave them attention it would continue. However, if we stopped paying attention at all and ignored it they would stop on their own since they were not getting the reaction that they wanted. My third takeaway was that connecting to students personally is very important in helping them learn. When I first arrived at Nicolet and didn’t know the kids well it was very tough to get them to listen or do anything with me. Once I started to connect with them more I noticed that they became more willing to do the activities I was telling them to do which allowed them to learn. My fourth takeaway is that young student’s attention can be difficult to hold. I worked with kids from kindergarten to fifth grade in VP so I had an array of ages. I noticed that with the fifth graders, I could hold their attention a little bit longer on things that we were supposed to be doing. With the younger kids, it was more difficult to keep them focused on the task at hand, and I was more often redirecting them than the older kids. For my fifth takeaway, I took real notice of the idea that each student learns differently from one another. At VP there were a lot of tasks that involved creating something using instructions, or by watching someone else do it first. I noticed that some of the kids excelled when the instructions were right in front of them and understood how to read and understand them. Other students excelled more when it was shown to them first, or there was a completed example in front of them that they could try and replicate. Seeing this idea play out in action drove home the point that teaching should use different strategies for different students. My sixth takeaway was that students need constant reminders of things. In the short time I was at VP, I noticed myself saying the same things to the students over and over. They needed to be reminded how things were done, not to run in the hall, or to not throw things at each other. My main work was with tutoring older students before this it was a little new to me to have to constantly remind them about these small things. My seventh takeaway was that sometimes kids just need a break and that should be granted to them. There were many days that I would come to VP and one or two students who were normally excited or happy to be there wanted nothing to do with the activities that day. Rather than force them to do the activity allowing them to have a break time and just do parts that they wanted to do for that day was beneficial to them. As educators understanding that students have their own lives and things happen is very important, the least we can do is give them a break every once in a while. For my eighth takeaway, I found that just because a student has behavioral problems does not mean that they are bad kids. Many of the kids that I worked with had behavioral problems in the classroom. What I noticed as I worked with them was not that they are bad kids at heart, but they have a lot of energy or have trouble focusing and their energy is not being focused on the right things. When I was able to get them interested in what we were doing all of those behavioral problems went away, as they were using their energy to do the task. While it is very difficult in practice to do this, it’s important to note and a big takeaway to not create assumptions about students before working with them. My ninth takeaway is that each student’s background knowledge although being the same age can differ heavily. Many topics were discussed or activities done during VP. Each of these was tailored to some bigger idea, whether it was writing, reading, hands-on learning, science, etc. I noticed that there were times when some kids would have vast background knowledge about the topic and it made it way easier for them to be successful at the task. While others had never encountered something that we were doing or talking about before and they struggled a bit more. Thinking about that for a classroom setting is important to not assume that people are coming from a vast background knowledge of the topics of the class. That is why pre-assessments can be an important tool to understand where the class understanding is. My final takeaway from the village project is that struggle is an important part of the learning process. Every single student struggled at one point during my time at Nicolet. Although for them it was very frustrating it was important for me to see as I never want to see a kid struggle, however watching them over a whole year showed me how important it is to the learning process. Kids who got things right away although being happy did not learn as much as a kid who struggled through an activity. Being okay with having a kid struggle and showing them that there is light at the end of the tunnel is one of the most important things an educator can do. I enjoyed my time at Nicolet, I got to make many connections with kids and see growth throughout the year in many of them. They were always excited when we were there and it was awesome to see a positive impact being made on not only a school but a school within the community that I am a part of.
When it comes to education my philosophy is that each student is deserving of a full education no matter what. Education is one of the most important things a young person can get and is essential to a child’s brain growth. This drives how I think of myself as an educator, I want to create the most comfortable and productive learning environment possible for students in my classroom. I also want students to understand that education is not just about the content, but the experiences and mind growth that goes along with learning.
The biggest thing I think about when being a teacher is creating a good learning environment. If the environment that the students are supposed to be learning in is a good one the quality of education is going to be much better. I think one of the biggest aspects I hold as an educator is respect. I think that respect goes a long way to creating a good learning environment. If I as an educator respect each student then there is a better understanding between me and the student. A healthy relationship like that creates a better environment not only for that student to learn but for each student in the classroom. Respect is also something that can be applied outside of the classroom to each student’s everyday life. If respect can be instilled into each student then the entire world could be a better place. Another aspect of a good learning environment is as an educator being approachable to each student. One of the biggest things that makes a student comfortable in a classroom is a teacher who is approachable about any questions they may have about course material or anything in general. I want to be an understanding teacher, someone who students feel comfortable coming up to and explaining something they don’t understand, or not trying to hide something that happened personally and allowing them to ask for an extension. I want to let students know that I understand life gets in the way of things sometimes and that is okay. As a student, the best teachers were the ones that I wasn’t scared to go talk to about anything and the conversations were always constructive.
I also believe that each student is not equal and should not be treated that way. What I mean by this is that only some students comprehend and learn the same way as others. One student may learn better with hands-on experience something like building a house that is meant to withstand an earthquake. Another student may benefit more from looking at a model and being able to see how a house is built in a high earthquake area to survive. A different student may need to see a video or be told exactly what it is. Whatever it may be each student has a different way that they comprehend information. For this reason, each student needs to be treated differently in how the student is educated. This is why I believe it is important to use many different teaching methods in the classroom. This way it allows not only for me as an educator to try different methods, but it allows the students to try and figure out how they learn the best. Once a student knows how they learn the best it opens up entirely new pathways in their education as they now can communicate with other teachers as to how they learn the best.
I believe that lesson planning is one of the most important parts of being a teacher. This is because lesson plans can determine whether a student is successful at learning or not. This is why implementing backward design is an important part of being a teacher. I find it important as it allows for the lesson planning to focus on the content that they are learning rather than focusing on the assessment. Focusing on the assessment doesn’t create a good learning environment and creates a repetitive, memorizing culture in the classroom. This is not what I want, I want a high-learning environment that promotes learning over memorization. Since I want to focus on this idea I also find that understanding brain function to be an important part of teaching. Understanding how student brains process new information allows to create lesson plans and an environment that will facilitate learning. Repetition will be a part of the lesson as repetition is how new information works its way to long-term memory allowing it to be retained in the student’s mind. These two pieces are important to a successful classroom culture being created. If these two pieces are forgotten within my philosophy I will lose part of what makes a successful classroom.
Education is one of the most important things in people’s lives. As an educator, it is our job to make that the most enjoyable experience that it can be. We have to do this while also making sure that each student gets the information that they are supposed to. It’s a difficult job but one that I feel a strong passion for as I have had so many teachers in my life who have made a difference and shaped who I am today.
The Village Project was a very interesting experience for me. I was able to get a lot of all of the things that happened there. One takeaway I got from Village Project was that I am on the right path for the education I want to do. My plan is go to secondary education and working with younger kids reinforced that I am in the correct spot. My second takeaway seems opposite of my first, but I was able to find that in a pinch I would be able to work with younger kids. While it wasn’t my favorite thing in the world, I was able to get through it and I believe I could teach them if need be. Third I think just getting experience out in the field was a big takeaway, going into a school that I wasn’t very familiar with felt like a huge takeaway for me as I was able to get out somewhere and be a part of something I never had before. Fourth working in a different environment than I was not used to, it was interesting to see how it was different from what I was used to. Fifth, I think the experience of having to deal with behavior issues and having to adapt in real time was very important. There were things that happened that I didn’t expect and having to adapt to them helped me a lot and made me think about certain tools to use. Sixth, I feel like a big takeaway for me was the relationships I was able to make with the students. It was really cool to see how excited they would get on days that we came and it had a big impact on why I want to do this. Seventh, the amount of diverse situations for each student was really shown to me. I think I never realized just how different every students situation was and doing the village project I was able to hear all of these different situations. Eighth, the opportunity to connect with the community around the college even more was huge for me, I feel like I became a part of something. Ninth, being connected with a different school is very important for me, being able to have connections to different schools can be very important for my future. Finally, the real world experience is something that I am never going to forget. I feel like in many other places this would not have been an opportunity like this. The village project was a good experience and I think that the best part about it going to just be being allowed to go out into the field.
