Reflection 3

"You touch a rock, you touch the past. you touch a flower, you touch the present. you touch a child, you touch the future."

Cool quote.

One thing I'd really like to learn to do better is teaching for multiple learning styles. I feel like I teach the way that I learn which is very visual, but I don't think I do a very good job teaching to the other types of learners. I especially feel my weakest area is in teaching the auditory group. I am not an auditory learner and so I may not teach in a way that helps those types of learners. I need to understand the way that they learn so that I can teach in a way that they will benefit from. I need to make sure that my learners participate in discussions, can always hear me, get one on one explanations whether from me or their peers, get asked questions during a lecture, and participate in activities such as role plays. This will help them stay attentive.

Reflection 2

"All 0ur dreams can come true --- if we have the courage to persue them." --Walt Disney

One thing that Wong talked about that I think I really need to implement in my teaching is how important it is to give the student an objective. He says that "the basis for every test is the objective of the assignments." When the student or even the teacher has an objective then you have measurement, and when you have measurement you have performance. This is like Shum's lab assignment system with "Shum's challenge". we go through the worksheet and we really have to learn what we're doing because we know at the end we'll have to do "Shum's Challange" and have the teacher sign off on it. We have measurement and so we have to perform. I could easily implement this in my guitar teaching. Instead of just giving my students a treat for practicing five days I could give them a treat for reaching a certain point in a song or being able to play with the metronome at a certain pace. Then they would have a specific goal to practice for rather than just practicing to mark off that they did. That would hopefully boost their performance.

Reflection 1

One thing I didn't realize until I took this class and started reading "the First Day of School" was that it is okay for teachers to think of themselves as people whose profession's purpose is to change lives. There's no doubt that I remember my teachers as people who greatly influenced and directed my life, but I never really related that to the nature of their profession. Instead I related it more to them as people, even though changing lives is one of the main reasons I want to become a teacher. I guess I just thought that changing lives through teaching was a secret only I knew, not the common goal of all teachers. Now that I know that wanting to change lives is an okay goal to have, I will hopefully become a more effective teacher so that I can actually do it.