Reflection 6

Some notes that I took while listening to the teachers of the STL's:

• Use Proximity: this helps the visual and auditory learners see and hear you. plus it's more engaging.
• Give Reasons: People want to know why they should know what you're trying to teach them.
• Lay out exactly what the students are going to learn so that they know how to connect the information you're giving them.
• Board writing skills. Do you have what it takes?
• Building blocks of learning. Make sure you're not just bombing them with information. build upon each little part to reach the final goal.
• WHY????? Tell them why they should know it. Exaggerate if necessary.
• Make it a game. Be ENGAGING.
• Formitively evaluate. Don't ask, "any questions?" at the end. Find out if they're following you the whole time you're trying to teach them.

Reflection 5

This week I went and observed at my former high school, Springville High School. We were supposed visit Mr. Boss but he didn't have a class first period so we went over to Mr. Bell's class. Mr. Bell was actually my Multimedia teacher in high school and was not a very good teacher. He got along with most of the kids, particularly the ones he could make fun of, but he didn't really teach. He just gave assignments and let us go to work. He was never organized and frequently lost the assignments that we would turn in. it was interesting to revisit his class and see that he still did everything the same even if it hadn't been effective years before. This made Mr. Boss seem very professional and very on top of things. Mr. Boss had brand new equipment and had a vision of where he wanted to be. What he's teaching is actually exactly what I want to teach when I graduate. He teaches video production, Tv, and photography. He told us of how he planned to get the students involved in student film festivals and other activities, as well as broadcast the various sporting events and activities happening in the school. I think those are some really good ways to get students involved in what they're learning because they would actually be doing projects that mattered to them, their peers, and to their entire community. I personally feel like that is what learning is about. We need to learn things in order to give back to and thus better the source that are learning comes from whether that's the community, family, friends, the world, or anything else. High School students should be learning to improve their personal future, while using their knowledge to give back to their community and school.

Reflection 4

Because of what we learned in class this week (theorists and taxonomies of teaching) I've been thinking a lot about my high school psychology teacher Mrs. Leek. She was my favorite teacher and I never really could figure out why when I was in High School. Normally my favorite teacher would have been one that was super fun and really laid back. Mrs. Leek definitely wasn't that way and yet I still enjoyed learning everything that she taught us. Now that I know a little bit more about teaching I can see why she was so effective. As students, we always knew exactly what she expected from us. she had very high expectations and followed through with us to make sure we reached her expectations. any work that may have been busy work for other classes didn't feel like busy work for her class because we knew that she would build upon that basic information. Because we knew that the information was important to her we knew it should be important to us. The best thing I think she did though was constantly tell us how much she loved her job. Because she made that clear, it was easy to ask her questions in class and out of class. Teachers who didn't show that they liked their job or who simply didn't like their job were hard to talk to because I always felt like I was getting in thier way or that they didn't really care to help me. Because I knew Mrs. Leek cared, I had more motivation to do better.

That's the kind of teacher I want to be.

The teacher that I went and observed this week at the Provo Junior high was really soft spoken. I think that it's really important to make sure all your students can hear you because even if they look like they're paying attention they're not getting anything out of it. The students were engaged in the activity they were doing but it seemed that if they began to get out of control he wouldn't be able to stop them.