Teaching and Adapting

The thing that I find the most difficult about education is the fact that it is unpredictable. That is why it is so difficult for us to even have a steady curriculum on how to teach aspiring educators how to teach. A lot of what I have been taught so far seems to amount to: “well, I guess you’ll have to figure that out for yourself, then”. Which is not entirely useful when all we want is logic and all we expect is worksheets and memorization and tricks and tools of the trade.

When you go to school for dentistry, they aren’t going to give you a person to practice your dentist-ing on and say “have at ‘er, see what works best” because that is just not practical. Education is not quite the same. A lot of what we learn is experimental, or philosophical, or is like, different parenting styles and what sorts of parents are out there.

Which is useful in its own right, we are taught to take what we learn and choose how we want to apply it. And we are taught to adapt. Which I think is one of the most important things the article is speaking of. And after this long introduction of not much importance, here are three points that I have written about the article and my feelings.

1. Teaching from a cultural standpoint – Last year, I volunteered at the Dojack and it was probably one of the best experiences of my life. I met so many people I found inspiring and, in a way, I was the one learning, which is super cheesy and lame, but it is true. My family can attest, I spent most of my time home talking about how much I loved my volunteering and what I was going to teach math wise the next day. But it was also challenging. Like the article talks about students from other cultures learning differently, the same was to be said about the youths in the centre. One individual I worked with in particular was First Nations and hadn’t gone to the same school for more than a year at a time. So teaching him was a lot different than when I would teach Calculus at my high school when our teacher was busy.

I think that the most important part of understanding the way that culture and your place in life affects how you are taught is giving us the understanding that there is not one effective way to teach, and a lot of different styles can be useful and have merit depending on who your learners are. Keeping an open mind and adapting to your learners in some ways instead of always expecting them to adapt to you can help them learn better and make school life a little easier.

2. The way I was taught and how it affects how I want to teach – Like most people in my generation, I have been taught in the take notes down, memorize notes, write tests way. There hasn’t been much shaking it up in the system when I was taught and so a lot of my decisions as an educator come from my feelings on how I was taught.

I really hate tests. I really hate tests. I really, really, really hate tests. So I probably won’t be too inclined to utilize exams. I like doing examples and I like having debates and discussions, so I will be more inclined to utilize those in the classroom. However, I know people who really love tests, and who excel at test work and struggle with assignments due to procrastination. I also have friends who never talk in class and hate participation marks because it is forcing them to talk. I think that knowing your learners and knowing their strengths and weaknesses is the best way to find a balance between different styles.

I think that’s pretty much all I have to say on the matter at the moment. I guess the biggest point I want to get across is that I have a strong belief in students helping to guide learning, and I want to bring that into my classroom as best I can. Ensuring that students are comfortable will make them learn more. That isn’t to say I’m never going to challenge them or make the students learn in a way they haven’t before. Because if they haven’t experienced something, how are they to know if they learn well from….visual learning or not?

First Practicum Day

For the first day at my field placement, I was unsure of how I should feel. I was incredibly nervous, but also excited to be back working with students.

The first experience with the students was awesome – the students are awesome, and so respectful and friendly. We didn’t get to do any teaching our first day, because there wasn’t any time for us to use, so the children are writing us short biographies that we will be given on the next Wednesday we go. I have already learned about half the students’ names through sheer determination, and it won’t be hard to learn the rest. I am pretty good at memorizing names, so that’s not my challenge. My challenge is to teach dance to the class in an efficient way that is both enjoyable and informative to the students I work with.

I have decided to teach the students how to Gumboot Dance:

The dance looks complicated, but it is easy to simplify the movements, and it is rhythm based. I used to teach music and rhythm workshops in Yorkton, so I have a bit of a background with that. I think I am feeling better about the experience because I will be both bringing in previous knowledge, and utilizing my strengths, as well as learning new things, and teaching a subject I am not the strongest in.

The final thing I have to mention is the classroom we are working in. I really like the school we are in, because it is quite small, so there are a lot of examples of the teachers and the students “making it work”. The chairs the students sit on are all extremely varied, some sit on standard student chairs, some sit on wheeling chairs, some sit on chairs that bounce, and about two-three students in every classroom I saw sat on medicine balls. They also have a few students per class that have noise-cancelling headphones, so the students who like to work in a quiet environment can do so without having to go elsewhere. There are also five students in our classroom who use laptops to write and do work on. The amount of adaptation and adjustment is really awesome, and I am pleased to see that the students have so much available to them even though they are a small school. Everyone is trying to make it work, and I appreciate the effort.

I am excited to continue working at our placement, and I can’t wait to see how everything progresses. There will be many challenges and difficulties, but I also think that there will be many instances of growth and understanding.

Sarah