Chapter 9: Involving Parents and Communities

This chapter addresses the need for teachers/schools to be in contact with the parents and community members to best offer children an education. It is exponentially more effective to have the teacher and parents on the same boat rather than having the child spend all day at school and then hearing a parent bad mouth a teacher or the subject matter. It is hard for adults to stop acting and talking in ways that show their opinions on things but for the betterment of the children everyone needs to be on the same page. In fact that is an important step I want to take as a teacher, if I am aware of a parent who thinks the material we are learning or my methods are stupid, I will ask them to meet with me to see how we can best remedy the situation and let their child thrive. I think people mistake disagreement as hostile confrontation, where in fact it can be used as a platform to change what I might not realize needed to be changed.

Chapter 8: A Safe and Healthy School Environment

It seems now more than ever (in my memory) do schools need to try and create a safe environment for students. Bullying is a huge problem both physically and emotionally, and now you add social media as a bullying medium and kids need adult allies. That is why it is so important to create an environment where your students feel comfortable both physically but also emotionally. When there is a feeling of safety a student will likely take more risks which will often times lead to greater learning. What it comes down to is simple; schools are the necessary step that a child takes to learn skills and information that shapes them into adults. It is a huge problem if that school is not a safe place for the child because their effort will be spent protecting themselves from all sorts of outside evils instead of focusing on learning. There are atmospheric ways a teacher can create a classroom that feels comfortable but I think the most important part is the unseen culture of the room. It is the job of the teacher to create a culture of respect and learning so children are free to explore.

Chapter 4: Designing Instruction to Improve Teaching and Learning

This seems like a no brain idea of a chapter but after sitting through many college classes I think it is important for all future teachers to read this. Know where you want to go with your students and design your lessons to get everyone there. Being over prepared as a teacher is the only way to expect to succeed; it is too much to ask of yourself to think you can best reach all the students with poor plans and off the cuff ideas. You should differentiate ahead of time and think of ways that might better engage the students. In general having great lesson plans ahead of time makes you a better teacher and will make the students better learners.

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.