A Whole New Mind

This presentation was powerful thanks to the links they included to hammer home their points. It was helpful to see what types of questions influence the results of the left-brain or right-brain quiz. I also enjoyed the smile test to gauge empathy. The presentors seemed to fully understand the material they were talking about, which in turn made the discussions at the tables deep and meaningful. Great Job!

Chapter 3: Brain Research Applied to Middle School

This chapter focuses on an idea that students should be taught how to think. Not in a forceful, “you will have this view” type of way, but rather students are capable of thinking about situations and make conclusions based on what they know. The time needed to think is talked about in terms of giving students time to think when you ask a question and as a teacher also allowing yourself time to respond to their answer before you respond. That is an important idea to grasp, people are often worried about what they are going to say next that they are not listening to the people they are talking with. This type of interaction requires very little thought. The chapter also looks at some logical fallacies that middle school students should be aware of. You will encounter these types of fallacies everyday so creating a population of people that can decipher the information and take the truth from it would do wonders for the sensationalism out there. I hope to teach students how to think, this chapter will come in handy when I am dealing with students that are living in an information age, maybe it will help me help them see through the garbage.

Student Oriented Curriculum

The student oriented curriculum idea is a strong one but I have reservations about the details. It seems too good to be true, and it has been my experience that usually when it seems that way, it is. There would need to be some guided structure to make sure learning progress was being made, I think the idea is more of a student input situation. The easy things to incorporate would be the rule making and the schedule design. I just think students lack the foresight to guide themselves down the correct road completely when left to their own devices. The overall idea of the structure is a strong one that I am sure has been fine tuned over the 12 years they have been executing it. I would like to read the book that compares the first year the school tried that to the current model they are using.

Chapter 13: Outdoor Adventures

This chapter talks about bigger or more time consuming activities that can be done with students. While the ideas are solid and it is easy to incorporate content into the outdoor activities, it would be more demanding on the administration to accommodate this type of learning. Bigger hiking trips or outdoor activities will take more time than one class period so the ideas of this chapter differ from the active learning chapter based on time needed. A lot of the examples in this chapter would be great to do as an advisory group, that way the content can still be touched on but there is not a feeling of complete academic purposes to the students.

Chapter 4: Active Learning

The fourth chapter of Meet Me in the Middle is an important one; it addresses the idea of actively engaging students with the content. Physically the middle school student is going through changes that make them uncomfortable in a typical school seating arrangement, thus causing fidgeting and behavior problems. The book offers a number of example activities that will get the students moving around while they learn. I think this is a very strong method. If I can get math students moving and using math they are way more likely to have it “click”. I like the small section about having a brainstorming session with your peers to find new ways to teach the same old stuff. I hope I am lucky enough to teach in a department that welcomes new ideas and encourages active learning.

Waiting for Superman

The film "Waiting for Superman" was done in a very powerful way. It succesfully engaged the viewer emotionally. But looking past the individuals involved in the movie is a big idea that the schools are continually failing our students. I am stuck on one part of the movie, well two actually but the money spent on prisoners is another long conversation in itself. But the part about the teachers union not even voting on the change to performance based pay really bothers me. There is no way you can look around and not acknowledge that changes need to be made. It might not have been the right change for the situation, but for the union to not even vote on it shows an arrogant sense of entitlement. Tenure should not be the goal of a teacher, and to make a second year teacher basically untouchable for life is a ridiculus business model.

Chapter 3

Backward design is the newest way to plan a lesson. While I saw it come together in practicum I am weary of only learning one way of doing things. It seems that is what creates grumpy old teachers that can’t change. The most important part of the design for me was a simple idea, high expectations. As a teacher we should find ways to challenge all the students and do so in a way that we expect them to work hard towards and succeed. The backward design model when used in an open environment like a college classroom where we can choose random technology projects as the end point may create some higher level thinking, but in a school run by standards and test results I fear the end product will be a standardized test score.