S.P.E.A.D.

That's the acronym I think Jenny came up with, because PEEP was just ridiculous since it only had two letters representing two different things each, and barely even the words worth remembering. So here goes S.P.E.A.D...

Stewardship- getting the kids in a mindset of responsibility toward the school and eventually society.

Pedagogy- the art and science of teaching

Equal Access- making sure every student has a chance to learn and succeed

Democracy- preparing the students for a democratic future

That's about as well as I understand each right now. I wanted to talk more about stewardship and democracy though. I'm not sure which is the right category for my thoughts, but the other day we were talking about preparing the kids for the future, to become responsible citizens of society. I've actually been thinking about that a lot since then, it's kind of the great mystery I want to crack as a teacher.

Today in elder's quorum I was thinking about home teaching, and about the people who do the bare minimum so they can give the presidency a thumbs up for the month, as if their personal percentage of home teaching counts in heaven. As if God has a scorebook and you get 20 points for the month just for doing it, and that gets you closer to heaven. Naturally it was in the mindset of a teacher. With my pointbook, are kids going to do the absolute minimum and get a grade that means nothing?

My theory at the moment is that, as a teacher, my responsibility is to figure out a way for the grades to reflect what they've learned. Beyond that, I need to make sure what they're learning will mean anything in the future. It might sound like a cliche, for grades to mean something and for learning to apply to life, but to come to that conclusion myself instead of merely accept what people tell me, is a big step, because now it becomes more of a personal mission to solve.

fin.

ists

So I don't think we were really expected to talk about this, but since Geoff called me a lecturer and a cognitivist, I figured I'd respond in a blog.

Yes, I consider lecturing and cognitivism very good for certain subjects, like history (of cereal) and science (of the universe). I love stories. One of my best teachers ever was Mr. Clark. I took Astronomy, Physics, Geology, and Environmental Science from him, and he was a lecturer. He showed a lot of slides, too though. But he had such a great voice and a great vocabulary that you could picture in your brain exactly what he was talking about. You could create the system and manipulate it and understand it just by hearing him talk about it. Last semester I took History of Creativity and the professor did a very good job simply telling the story of history. I didn't do awesome in the class but it was somewhat of a miracle that the two and a half hours of lecture didn't kill me. I love stories.

But lecturing and cognitivism aren't everything, especially in what I want to teach. I'm a big fan of projects, but projects with tough criteria. It's a difficult balance, because some projects it's like the teacher wants one specific thing from all the students, other times the teacher has no criteria so you have no direction. Constructivist as it may sound, I'm going to slip into a little bit of behaviorism. Last year in industrial design we had a few design assignments due every day of class, twice a week. Each one had its own set of criteria to follow. Sometimes extremely specific, other times more open. At the end of class we had our final design project that had zero criteria, except that it be done in Adobe Illustrator and on 8.5"x11" paper. It would have been difficult to come up with something, but I had been conditioned (behaviorism) to want criteria, so I set my own. Within the project I knew I needed rules and guidelines to keep it consistent and attractive and it turned out very well.

I'll stop ranting now. Those are my thoughts on behaviorism vs. cognitivism vs. constructivism.

reflection #2: Gong is the end of the universe

First of all let's talk about my quasi-disasterous teaching experience (#2). Basically, I was in a hurry because we were short on time and I forgot the fancy teaching techniques I was going to use, and ended with the doomed "any questions" thing. I had wanted to isolate the lesson into key points that could be tagged with one word. For example, the Doppler effect could be coined as squishing sound waves. But I didn't. I enjoyed daydreaming about the edge of the universe though.

Now let's move on to the book. It's good I suppose. I'm a little bit cynical about anything I hear about that seems to sum up life in weird equations. The three-person model, the triangle of symmetry, etc. That said, I love the core principle of the book, in that it seems to put the teacher and the learner on the same level. It's not as easy to do in a high school class, but as an elder's quorum instructor I found that the lesson went so much better when I forced the guys to teach me. I'd ask questions that had no right answer and let them try to convince me of one. Of course, we were basically all return missionary college students, so we were on the same level. Plus it was the gospel, so a new member might have just as good of insights as a high priest.

So I keep applying this class and the readings to those teaching experiences and my perception of what teaching high school would be like. The beauty of teaching multimedia is that the only area I know that they don't, is the tool. Beyond that, the art, the creativity, the students will be able to teach me just as much as I can teach them. Maybe I'm a little too optimistic about it but I think I could really enjoy it. I love seeing what these kids can come up with.

Reflection #1 - technucation!

That's right, I'm reflecting. It's mildly forced reflection, but that's why I waited until the day before it was due to start.

But not really, I reflected quite a bit in class. For example, the definitions I came up with:

to learn: to gain knowledge and understanding through personal experiences, reflection, others' experiences, or others' knowledge, which leads to an improvement in your life

to teach: to share knowledge and understanding through words and/or example. to teach well is to invoke a curiosity in the pupil so they willingly and actively learn for themselves

technology education: teaching and learning ways to use technology to better understand and manipulate the world around us

I feel like I tried too hard to sound like a textbook. Either way, later I wrote and underlined the phrase "using technology to more efficiently create." Creating is neat. I'm trying to avoid ranting about it. In a nutshell, I love creating, I love teaching. That part 2 of 'to teach' embodies my personal philosophy behind teaching, which is merely to inspire/invoke their curiosity, and they take control of their own education from there.