Sea of Green Life

  What do you think of Engelmann's assertion that, 'if the students haven't learned, the teacher hasn't taught'? There is no more essential time to ensure that the teacher taught and the student learned than letting a 15 year old drive for the first time.  In my last post, I commented on how I can see both sides to any argument. Which sometimes makes it hard to argue a point without arguing with myself! Engleman’s stance of, 'if the students haven't learned, the teacher hasn't taught,’ poses no such dilemma. The entire point of teaching, whether it be teaching as a profession or when teaching a skill is for the student to learn. If learning isn’t happening, then teaching isn’t happening.  Wow that seems harsh. Especially as I spend more and more time with students that need a lot more support. Here’s where the classification lies though. Although what the teacher intended to teach may not be learned in that lesson or time frame, learning is h

  Being both cursed and gifted with the ability to see and understand both points of an argument or decision, I can see the benefits and pitfalls of Dewey’s belief and theory on the education system. The bare bones are that Dewey believed tradition education was rooted in forcing students to memorize information that others set as important versus his idea that students should learn with and through their actual learning experiences and capitalizing on their interests. My position is firmly in the middle as usual. I absolutely agree with Dewey, we should be capitalizing on the students interests and life experiences to make their learning the most relevant to them. When they are invested and engaged, learning happens faster, deeper, and is retained longer. However, some things need to be taught to children even if their interests do not lie there, like world geography, history, and math. At one time or another everyone hates these topics, but we still needed to know the information.

Neitzsche is not unlike most of the other famous philosophers that people have or have not heard of. He had some groundbreaking thoughts that changed how people look at things, but also like many other philosophers, said some things that probably made people mad. One of those things may be what he said about achieving “true education.” According to Neitzsche, to achieve a true education one must confront and surmount three main obstacles or “dangers.” They are isolation, crippling doubt, and the pain of confronting one’s limitations. Uffda. Those are rough, and as most of us can relate to, they are also absolutely present in at least one of our childhood memories of school. This I could agree with Neitzsche on. Those are our biggest obstacles to really succeed at school. If we are reserved, or are not taught the skills to approach and overcome those barriers, then we will absolutely struggle or possibly not even achieve all that education has in store for us.  The part that sets Neitzs

Have you heard the phrase, “Believe it and you can acheive it?” There are endless phrases and mottos to motivate yourself to suceed. This stemmed from Aristotle, who observed and believed that not only can we effect the sucess or failure of our own lives with our positive or negative thoughts, we can also change the lives and trajectory of those around us. As an educator and mother this is monumental information and I have seen it in action throughout the years. Years ago on the first day of school in my combined second and third grade classroom, we were discussing things we wanted to do that year and books we enjoyed. Suddenly a little boy next to me burst into tears. I was shocked as to what might have caused this. When asked, he adamantly responded that he couldn’t read (entering second grade). His friends could read big books, but he could not. Now he was in with second and third graders and he felt everyone could read-except him. This boy was coming in with his own self-fufilli

 "The unexamined life is not worth living." -Socrates      Socrates coined the phrase that the unexamined life is not worth living. What do you think about this assertion that admitting failure and learning from errors is as important as reflecting on your successes in making you a good teacher?      Just as a car can not continue without regular maintenance and fuel, teachers also need to address their needs to maintain effective teaching. Teachers do this by not simply enjoying and building on past successes, but also by continually reviewing lessons, days, or even minutes of interaction.    This car was trying to get it's problem across, but I didn't reflect on what was happening. It seemed to be running well, until it wasn't.  When things are going well, teachers should reflect on what was going well and why. This will make it possible to repeat successes. However, we are not in a position where we have set items that we can simply copy and paste.

  How Brain Compatible is My Teaching/School/District Quiz Reflection Page 11 of How the Brain Learns, 6th Edition by David A. Sousa Most of the scores for this survey fell in the mid to high range. Those items that fell in the mid (3) range, were because as a teacher I feel that I am not as intentional about setting up some of those opportunities. For example, giving students time to talk about what they are learning could certainly increase, but there is a line between discussing the learning and getting distracted. Numbers 9 and 10 I rated as a 2 overall because they are not terms I am familiar with (chunking and primacy-recency effect). After reading the definitions, those are present in my lessons and daily teaching, but I am not intentional with the approaches yet.  The other item that I would score at the mid range is adapting the curriculum to the windows of opportunity during cognitive growth. This happens naturally in the curriculum, first grade concepts are in

  Reflecting from How the Brain Learns, 6th Edition by David A. Sousa Taking the quiz on page 10, What Do You Already Know? My overall score was 60% which I thought was low because of the history of Traumatic Brain Injury/Post Concussion Syndrome in our house. After reviewing the results, I felt a little better because the ones I got wrong were technical. For example the first question asks about what part of the brain decides what goes into long term memory. I don’t know the names of the parts of the brain, just how it works and adapts. Which is shown in the next two questions I answered correctly. The focus was about how learners learn and whether cramming before a test is helpful. Personal experience was all I needed for those answers. If you are wondering, cramming right before doesn’t help.  Taking this quiz as soon as I got the book helped me see the things that will be covered in the text.  It also allowed me to clear up some of my misunderstandings right away as I