How Do I Start Thinking Like a Teacher?

I think that more and more I really am starting to think like a teacher. In classes I am mostly observing and noting how the professor teaches, and which parts I would want to use, and which techniques don't seem that effective. Also, I have started getting better at editing my papers, and I think that's a product of my brain starting to function more as a teacher, and being able to see how the grading process works and what parts of an assignment really matter and should be focused on by the student. The project that we did when we made our own schools showed me how I have grown out of the student brain set. I reallt enjoyed that assigment and found that I had a lot of ideas about how I would structure a curriculum. That was sort of what made me realize that this change is happening to me as I make my way towards Practicum.

Which Theories and Historical Influences Should Most Impact the Schools We'd Like to Have?

This question was really most covered by the Wiki assignment we just completed, when we each chose an educational shift and talked about its relevance in today's schools. We haven't shared those yet, so I don't know much about everyone else's, but from my own, I have seen how all the different theories that arise do have an impact on education....it just depends on whether it changes all schools, one school, one teacher, or one student that seperates them from each other.

I am most wondering about everyone else's educational shifts and I think that will answer my question of how the past has provided what we think of as education today.

How Can I Use Knowlege of the Learner to Become a Better Teacher?

This question has been covered a lot in this course. The payne reading we did and responded to focused a lot on understanding the different minds of students and how that knowlege will ultimately make us better teachers. It tried to show us how to appeal to different learning styles, whether thos ehave evolved because of class differences or some other reason. The discussions we have in class about seating arrangments also have let me see how teachers have to think about everything they do in relation to how their students are going to feel about it. Many of the activities we've done have led to a discussion like this which shows how in depth teachers must think about their students viewpoint in order to be really efficient.

I think I'd like to talk about this in relation to homework, because I know that students often hate homework and end up with a ton of it between all of their classes. I wonder how a teacher thinks about this and how one comes to assigning "the right amount of homework".

How can I be Successful at UMF?

So far I haven't had a lot of trouble figuring out how to be successful here. I think the most important things I've learned are just to pay attention to what's going on here, and to use all of the resources that the campus has available. My peer advisor and advisor have helped me be successful because they have answered all my questions about my major, and have set me up for a really good educational course. There hasn't been a lot in this course specifically that I feel has related to this topic, but just completing the assignments, and working cooperatively, as in any other class, has contributed to my total success here.

I think this question overlaps with my last one, just being specifics about practicum, sutdent teaching, and any other programs or tests (like Praxis 11) that we have to make sureto complete in order to be successful both here, and in the long run.

How Do I Become a Teacher?

I don't think I've learned a lot so far in the way of the actual physical process of becoming a certified teacher, but I have begun to gather more of my ideas of how to act in such a way that would get me there. I general, I've just learned that I have to really love what I want to teach, and the kind of kids I want to teach in order to actually make it there. Without that passion, I've learned it's almost impossible to reach that goal.

I would most like to learn more about the little detailed steps that are essential to getting certified. It seems that already there are a lot of strict deadlines and steps that I have to remember and cannot miss, that I'd like to have a geater picture of the long term journey to graduating with a degree. And I guess also how the job search goes and how to manipulate that process successfully.

Symposium Day

On Symposium Day, I attended presentations from Venues 7 and 8, which were the English and Creative Writing subjects. My favorite presentation was Joe Normandin's paper which compared his interpretation of beauty to the hardcore punk scene. He outlined valid beauty as the possession of judgment, taste, and value, and proved how each of these things is found withing the hardcore culture. He also explained how hardcore is split up into two subcultures, that of the straight edge members, and that of the do-it-yourself members. The straight edge culture revolves around not using any illegal substances, and not engaging in permiscuous sex. The DIY part advocates the self production of music without any help from corporations. He then finished by showing how all of these values and beauty come together at the Gilman St. venue. I really liked this part because he was so passionate about it and showed a true understanding of how important that club is to the real underlying meaning of hardcore punk. He was really effective in getting his audience to appreciate his ideas and to realize that hardcore punk isn't the offensive culture many people in the mainstream mistake it to be.

As far as what I could present at a future Symposium Day....I'm really not very sure. I am very interested in the function of literature as it evolves over the years. With the recent death of Kurt Vonnegut, who was possibly my biggest literary idol, I have thought about paying tribute to him at Symposium by proving how his works have changed the way we think about literature. That's just one possibility, but I know it would involve one of my great heroes and would try to point out how they've affected so many other great authors.

Campuswide Interventions That Improve Student Achievement

In the last section of the Payne reading, the part that jumped out at me was her idea of creating benchmarks in each subject. These are general guidlines that set up units throughout a semester or a year and allow each department to have common goals to reach at certain times. This breaks up a year into more manageable pieces so thatteachers can evaluate how their students are doing earlier on than by one final test at the end of the year before its too late to do anything. Benchmarks usually show the natural progression of skills and lead to a final accumulative assessment of each section that the class has achieved.
This was another idea that I picked out because of my own experience with it. My high school was very openly structured by these kinds of benchmarks and when I was a tutor and a peer mentor, I was involved in the creation of some of these benchmarks which would usually be labeled by certain novels or literary time periods. This was a really good way to create units that the kids to look foward to as they were given them all on the syllabus at the beginning of the year. I really agree with Payne's explanation of this technique and think it's a really effective way to break up a subject.