Chris Blankenship
April 22, 2015
Education 115
As I entered into the middle school I was assigned to observe for the first time, I honestly did not know what to expect. My previous experience observing public schools was not an overwhelmingly positive one. It had caused me to question whether or not I truly wanted to be an educator, so one can say I was nervous to see how this time spent in school would go. However, by the second day that I had spent at the middle school, I knew that this was exactly the field that I belonged in. The reason that I discovered this so quickly was not because of some grand revelation, but because I learned that teaching those that come into a classroom can be difficult; this does not mean that it cannot be fun.
Throughout the course of this semester spent observing, I realized that, as a teacher, I will have the ability to make school either extremely negative, or really fun. This came to me as the teacher explained to me exactly what it is he tries to do every day. The way he explained it to me made so much more sense than any textbook could tell me, and it was simply the concept of attempting to teach every student in the classroom the same thing in as many ways as possible. At first it was a confusing statement, but the more I thought about it the clearer it became that not every student will learn the same way. Thus, the more varieties of methods one tries at teaching, the more effective the message that will come across.
I observed this multiple times as I went to this history class in sixth grade. I was amazed at how many students were retaining the information that the teacher had presented within the week. Only once or twice did I ever witness in incorrect answer at all, mostly the answers that were not absolutely correct were close enough that the student soon figured out the issue. The reason behind this success is because with every lesson he would teach the same topic in various ways. For example, during his lesson on World War II Island Hopping, he was able to present the way of battle in ways that appealed to visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and other types of learners. Each day had about five points that were to be explained, and so he started each day off with five questions on the board that the students had to copy down and would presume to answer throughout the class period. Then the main part of the lesson would be explained via PowerPoint. After this, or sometimes during, he would switch to readings from the textbook, watch a video, or even do a small skit explaining what was going on at that point in history. Back to the example of World War II, there was a video from a documentary explaining the concept of Island Hopping. After this, the students were all “islands” and one student, as the United States, had to figure out the best and most efficient way of getting to the student who was Japan. Each of these helped to explain the concept of the lesson through different ways, some more fun than others while other types provided a more informative approach.
There were several more examples, that I was able to observe and note that allowed each lesson to be able to “stick” with that many more students. This was a valuable lesson for me to witness firsthand as I feel as if I was given more examples in this way than I would have via a textbook. This endowed me with a lot of enthusiasm as I exited this middle school classroom, that I would someday soon have a class of my own in which I would be able to experiment and find which learning strategies are best implemented to my students. There was a definite and distinct contrast to this as opposed to my last experience, as I know without a doubt what these students are learning; and even more important that this, I know exactly how they are learning as well.
April 22, 2015
Education 115
As I entered into the middle school I was assigned to observe for the first time, I honestly did not know what to expect. My previous experience observing public schools was not an overwhelmingly positive one. It had caused me to question whether or not I truly wanted to be an educator, so one can say I was nervous to see how this time spent in school would go. However, by the second day that I had spent at the middle school, I knew that this was exactly the field that I belonged in. The reason that I discovered this so quickly was not because of some grand revelation, but because I learned that teaching those that come into a classroom can be difficult; this does not mean that it cannot be fun.
Throughout the course of this semester spent observing, I realized that, as a teacher, I will have the ability to make school either extremely negative, or really fun. This came to me as the teacher explained to me exactly what it is he tries to do every day. The way he explained it to me made so much more sense than any textbook could tell me, and it was simply the concept of attempting to teach every student in the classroom the same thing in as many ways as possible. At first it was a confusing statement, but the more I thought about it the clearer it became that not every student will learn the same way. Thus, the more varieties of methods one tries at teaching, the more effective the message that will come across.
I observed this multiple times as I went to this history class in sixth grade. I was amazed at how many students were retaining the information that the teacher had presented within the week. Only once or twice did I ever witness in incorrect answer at all, mostly the answers that were not absolutely correct were close enough that the student soon figured out the issue. The reason behind this success is because with every lesson he would teach the same topic in various ways. For example, during his lesson on World War II Island Hopping, he was able to present the way of battle in ways that appealed to visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and other types of learners. Each day had about five points that were to be explained, and so he started each day off with five questions on the board that the students had to copy down and would presume to answer throughout the class period. Then the main part of the lesson would be explained via PowerPoint. After this, or sometimes during, he would switch to readings from the textbook, watch a video, or even do a small skit explaining what was going on at that point in history. Back to the example of World War II, there was a video from a documentary explaining the concept of Island Hopping. After this, the students were all “islands” and one student, as the United States, had to figure out the best and most efficient way of getting to the student who was Japan. Each of these helped to explain the concept of the lesson through different ways, some more fun than others while other types provided a more informative approach.
There were several more examples, that I was able to observe and note that allowed each lesson to be able to “stick” with that many more students. This was a valuable lesson for me to witness firsthand as I feel as if I was given more examples in this way than I would have via a textbook. This endowed me with a lot of enthusiasm as I exited this middle school classroom, that I would someday soon have a class of my own in which I would be able to experiment and find which learning strategies are best implemented to my students. There was a definite and distinct contrast to this as opposed to my last experience, as I know without a doubt what these students are learning; and even more important that this, I know exactly how they are learning as well.