Teacher Blogs

www.docereestdiscere.wordpress.com -Studen/Teacher Blog
www.youthvoices.net -student written blog
www.learningismessy.com/blog -Blogs that can be used in the classroom

Last Child in the Woods

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrDIbt80Ve8

Final disposition

I believe disposition can be taught but only to a certain extent. There are certain things they one can be taught, but then there are other things that a person just has to experience in order to learn. Future teachers can be taught specific things in the classroom, but there are other aspects of teaching that can only be taught with time and the actual experience. A teacher cannot be taught the style of teaching they will use in the classroom, it is something that they must acquire as they continue in the education field. They must find a style that best suits them personally and the students that they are teaching. To enhance these dispositions of teaching I think that there should be more opportunities for future educators to be in an actual classroom so that they are able to observe different situations they may encounter during teacher. I think that the only way teachers can really learn how to be a good teacher is by observing other good teachers and see how they work in the classroom.

Resilience

Sometimes is it difficult to prepare future educators for the different things they will encounter while teaching until they have actually experienced it. To prepare teachers for the stresses related to their profession I believe we must tell them how different situations showed be handled with a student and then give them opportunities in actual classrooms to observe how other teachers handle certain stresses.
It is difficult to prevent someone from changing professions if they just don't enjoy what they are doing because this usually makes for a bad teacher due to the lack of interest in their job. I believe that their should be some type of incentive for teachers who have stayed with the profession for a certain amount of time. Many teachers seem to want to give up after their first year of teaching but what they need to know is that becoming a good teacher can take years of hard work. I think new teachers just need to give it time before they consider a new profession.

Humility

Humility is something that some people have a difficult time realizing, especially when someone shows them that they are wrong. The last time I was wrong is when I was having a discussion on the phone with my parents. I was very adamant about the point I was trying to make, but my father was also. After some heated discussion for about twenty minutes, I realized that the point that I was trying to make was completely irrelevant to the topic in which we were discussing. Although I was completely embarrassed that I was wrong, I graciously admitted that my father was correct. I feel that teachers also need to be able to accept the humility and admit when they are wrong. Sometimes teachers seem to be too confident in what they are teaching, that when they are wrong at any time they are unable to admit this. A good teacher should be confident in the things they are teaching their students, but should be to admit their errors when they are incorrect.

Collaborativeness

A highly effective team or group is made by different people in these groups knowing what their roles are within the group and acquiring them for the benefit of the group to the best of their ability. There needs to be someone to take responsibility as the leader of the group or team. This individual should be someone the other group members can turn to for advice or encouragement at any time needed. Groups can have more than one leader of a group, and sometimes having more than one leader can make the team more successful. Also, there needs to be members of the group that help keep the ones around them on task and focused on the project they are working on. Another role that one must play in a group is someone who keeps everything organized and knows when things are to be done when needed. Every person plays an important role in the success of a group or team. If each individual works hard at fulfilling their roles to the best of their ability then it will lead to an accomplished, successful group effort.

Efficacy

Teachers need to possess certain characteristics in order to be successful in their profession. I believe that confidence can help one become a highly effective educator because if a teacher shows others that he or she is confident in what they is saying to her class or teaching then it will give the students the confidence to learn. If a teacher shows a lack of confidence the students are going to have a difficult time focusing and learning from the teacher. Also, an educator needs to have a great amount of work ethnic in order to be successful. They need to set an example for their students because when a student sees his or her teacher working hard for them, they will do the same thing in return. Also, a teacher must show good work ethic because it helps them show their colleagues that they care about their job and do what they can to be successful at their job.

Inventiveness

There are many different ways that schools encourage, teach, and reward creavity and imagination for their students. Ways that schools teach and encourage creavity and imagination is by letting students explore in the classroom. Doing activities that allow students to expand their minds beyond just the textbook lets them use their own ideas and thoughts to come up with answers to questions. This can be done through open-ended writing activities, art projects, group activities, or class discussions. It is important to let students express themselves and their creative minds because if this is not done then some children begin to lose these creativity skills that they have acquired over the years. Today teachers tend to focus so much on increasing students' test scores and cramming them with information that they do not take the time to increase their creativity or let them express this aspect of their learning. I think that in our 21st century society we must take time in the classroom to let students express these creative talents that they possess because they are just as important as the other aspects of learning that we spend more time on then the others.

Monday Night Lecture

I believe the role playing exercise was an effective way to help learn about student learning and accountability because it put us students in a somewhat "life like" setting of what each side of this situation would argue in order to have the end result be in their favor. Some of the disadvantages to using a more lecture form of teaching is that the students are not able to interact with other students or the teacher. Also, they aer unable to express their opinion on certain issues because they would just be getting direct information from the teacher. Some advantages to this type of teaching is that it is a very structured environment so the students are able to get the maximum amount of learning time they can receive. I believe that we do spend more time paying attention to the higher achieving students and parents rather than the lower achieving students because we focus on helping these students excel even more rather than helping the lower achieving students catch up to the students with the higher standards.

Passion

A teacher's enthusiasm about a subject can greatly influence their students' feelings about the subject. If you have a teacher that absolutely loves the subject they are teaching and clearly express their passion for the subject, it makes the environment in the classroom more fun, but if you have a teacher that does not like what they are teaching, the class can be boring or dull at times. In high school, my chemistry teacher had a passion for his profession and his subject area. I was never a very good student when it came to any type of science, but he made chemistry so much more fun for me and I learned a lot with him as my teacher, and greatly improved my grade in the subject area. Everyday he would come to class with such enthusiasm and a smile on his face, ready to teach his students something new. He would speak with such interest in the subject, and this passion for chemistry carried on everyday throughout the whole year. I feel that because of this I learned more because he made the class interesting and found a way to get every student engaged in what we were learning.

Authenticity

Sometimes it is difficult to tell if a teacher is being authentic or "fake" when showing compassion for their students or their profession. It is difficult to tell the sincerity of a teacher when they are teaching because some teachers are able to make it look like they enjoy their profession when really they dread going to work everyday. Also, it is hard to determine if a teacher is showing authentic compassion and care for a student. Everyone has always had the feeling that they believe a teacher dislikes them. Is this because the teacher is not being authentic with them? Although most of the time the teacher really does not dislike the student, it may seem this way because of the teacher's authenticity of sincerity towards the student when they are encouraging them or giving them some kind of praise.

Compassion

Both my mom and my dad are elementary school teachers, and they are very involved with the students of the whole school and their individual classroom. A few years ago my dad had a young boy in his class who did not have the best home life. His mother worked two jobs just to help them scrape by, and his dad was an alcoholic who had recently been sent to jail. Around Christmas time my dad had the class write a letter to Santa telling him what they wanted for christmas. My dad was walking around the room and looking at each students list and when he came to this particular boy his paper was blank. My dad asked him why he had not written anything down and the boy had replied that his mom had told him that they wouldn't be able to afford christmas presents this year and he felt bad asking for presents. After school that day my dad discussed this situation with my mom, and the both of them came up with an idea. My parents called the young boy's mother and asked if there is any way they could help out this year. At first the mother was hesitant, but then she thought of her children not having a Christmas and she agreed. So on Christmas morning my parents came to the family's home with a bunch of gifts for the family. My parents said the joy on the kid's faces was one of the best things they had ever seen.
The compassion my parents showed for this student was a great thing and being able to impact a child's life like they did really reassured me that teaching was what I wanted to do with my life.

Respect

My junior year of high school I was in math class one day and the class had finished the assignment for the day and we were all sitting around discussing the boys basketball game from the previous night. The team suffered a big loss in the last seconds of the game and it was partly based on a decison the coach made in the final seconds of the game, well that coach was my dad. Although I did not agree with the coaching decision my dad had made, I still was trying to defend his decision. One of my friends and I were debating back and forth about it when my teacher decided to join in on the discussion. He said that the descision made by the coach was idiotic, and he was a horrible coach and responsible for the team's loss. I feel like this was a very disrespectful comment to make because not only was I, the coach's daughter, in the class, but I feel like in situations like that where it concerns another teacher or coworker someone should not share those comments with others in the workplace, especially with students.