Ptakattakc's Blog

γνῶθι σαυτόν

ptakattakc — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:56:34 +0000

My teaching philosophy is quite simple, my teaching philosophy is old, and my teaching philosophy consists of two words: “Know thyself”.

These words, first written on the entrance of the Oracle at Delphi, are deceptively simple. While brief, they encompass much.

Said briefly (but much longer than two words), I think a good teacher needs to first understand what he or she thinks about educational issues. For example: a good teacher needs to know what he or she thinks about intelligence. A good teacher also needs to know their view on the social aspect of learning, demographics in education, emotion in regards to education, and a great many other things. Besides the “weekly secrets” we went over each week of lecture, a good teacher needs to understand how he or she feels about any other issue that affects his or her teaching career.

Knowing these things is very important. Once someone knows what his or her view is, it can start working at any problem regarding those issues from a specific angle. No individual can work at something from all angles, so focusing on one allows an individual to focus his or her energy so that it can be useful.

Another reason that knowing these things (and knowing oneself) is important is that knowing oneself entails a lack of stubborn thinking and constant reflection on ones own actions. To truly understand oneself requires this and also a willingness to change one’s view on any and all educational issues as new evidence presents itself.

While adaptability is the greatest trait of this particular philosophy, it does add a great bit of ambiguity to it. Here, I’ll attempt to clear that ambiguity up a bit.

At this particular instant, this philosophy entails that I get to know my students as best I can. I feel that knowing my students will better enable me to teach them efficiently and well. Not only do I need to understand what I think about issues, it is imperative that I know and understand how my students feel and also how my views affect them.

Again, to get back to my philosophy on its most basic level, I feel that I need to know myself to be a good teacher. How I teach and what I think will undoubtedly change over the years, but as long as I constantly search for a better understanding of myself I feel that I’ll do pretty well.

Demographics and Education

ptakattakc — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:42:10 +0000

What are the trends?:

LANGUAGE: The population of Spanish speakers is increasing in the US. Already, Spanish is the second most common language in the United States, with more than 10% of the population speaking it as a first language. While the historical norm in the US is the eventual Anglicization of immigrants over the course of a few generations (this is also supported by studies done on 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanics in the US), the short term effect is going to be that more and more people are going to speak Spanish in the US until immigration from Latin America slows.

RELIGION (OR LACK THEREOF): Along with the increase of Hispanics in the United States, the number of Roman Catholics is increasing, as the majority of immigrants from Latin America are Roman Catholic.

One of the fastest growing Religious demographic in the United States is that of Islam, whose numbers have skyrocketed since the 1990s. While there are no accurate information of the exact numbers of Muslims in the US, estimations sometime go as high as a few million. Also, because there are no reputable demographics on them, their future trend possibilities are unknown. However, this religious demographic is important to keep an eye on, as all experts agree that they disagree; thus, the demographic can feasibly do almost anything from growing even more to dwindling.

Finally, a demographic that is growing in the US is those who lack a religion. According to recent studies, the number of people expressing a lack of religion has grown to around 15% (with these new “converts” to irreligion coming from primarily protestant denominations)

CITY VS COUNTRY: Over the past 100 years, the amount of people living in the city as compared to those living outside of urban areas has been changing. More and more people occupy urban areas with less living in the country.

NUCLEAR FAMILIES DOWN: Today, about one out of four children live with a step parent. Also, recent reports indicate that the majority of women that are pregnant for the first time are not married.

These trends can affect educators in many ways.

Hispanic/Spanish speakers rising: Teachers are going to have to be more proficient in the Spanish language. Also, they are going to have to be prepared to teach students with only limited English skills.

Nuclear Families falling: This will possibly put a strain on both the teacher and the parent, as one parent will need to fill the role of two in the education of his or her child. That is, where, in the past, two parents both shared the work of being involved in the child’s education, the burden will fall on only one. As it is virtually impossible to play the role of two parents while still keeping a job, more of the responsibility will inadvertently fall upon the teacher and the school system itself.

More Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Irreligious: This will require a much larger degree of sensitivity on the part of the teacher because of the uniqueness of all of these groups. Also, teachers of the future are going to have to make sure that these groups have as little tension with one another as possible, as each of these individual groups historically and currently have issue with the other two of them.

Fewer rural population: This will effect education the most, as it is much, much easier to find something to do outside of school when playing hooky in the city as in the country. The effect of this will be that school becomes, in fact, voluntary (although it will still be mandatory on the books), as only students that want to go to school will.

One final thought: While demographic trends do not always accurately predict the future, they are an important tool for educators to use to prepare themselves for what is likely to happen.

Motivation and Learning

ptakattakc — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 02:31:28 +0000

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

One can imagine a great multitude of other ways to convey the exact same message as the above sentence. In order to clearly connect it to last weeks lecture topic, however, I feel that one way in particular does better than the rest: Motivation is to learning as gravity is to a falling object: when one is there, so is the other.

Students do not learn if they do not wish to learn. The simplicity of this statement cannot be overstated. Therefore, it should be the goal of a good teacher to get and keep his or her students motivated to learn by any and all ethical means possible.

There are many methods to accomplish this. One that really stuck out to me was mentioned in our textbook, that being the incorporation of certain aspects of showmanship. You have to spark curiosity within students, give them a feeling of suspense, and then (finally) resolve that feeling by teaching them what they want to know (which, if done well, should be what you, the teacher, want them to know as well).

Here’s the process I came up with from the textbook:

To spark curiosity, the teacher needs to “advertise” upcoming course material by mentioning the coolest or most interesting part about it.

To make a sense of suspense, the teacher sparks his or her students curiosity, but does not satisfy it right away. He or she mentions the coolest part of the upcoming material, but does not go into more detail…yet. Going into more detail now would “spoil the ending.”

Finally, the teacher teaches the unit, saving a full explanation of the best part for last, ensuring that his or her students are kept at the edge of their seats gathering up as much information as possible until the end of the unit, when their curiosity is finally placated, leaving the students with a sense of resolution and satisfaction.

For the next lesson, the entire process is repeated.

—————————————————————————–

There can be many variations on this scheme. Rather than saving the most interesting part of the material for last, the teacher can save the most fun part of the material for last (for example, a group project or game) that can only be done after the students understand the material before that.

Emotions

ptakattakc — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:23:54 +0000

Weekly Secret:
Effective teachers and parents continually seek to understand the dynamics of the emotional states of the children whom they desire to educate in order to maximize opportunities for teaching and learning.

Emotions affect thought which effect emotions which effects thoughts which effects emotions which… the cycle can continue forever, like the number 1/3 in decimal form, or a circle, or the Never Ending Story, or time, or the amount of time a bad movie takes (although the bad movie only never ends figuratively, not literally) or the hamster dance….

Simply put, one can say that thoughts and emotions are related and affect each other while being separate more so than any other two things. Therefore, it can be said that “Effective [educators]… seek to understand the dynamics of [their students] emotional states…”

This can be illustrated through example:

Constantine teaches a class and has a bright student, Charlemagne. Charlemagne has always gotten stellar marks on exams and homework, so Constantine is quite surprised when he Grades Charlemagne’s exam and finds that he has failed miserably. While, reflecting on this, Constantine realizes that Charlemagne has been a bit “off” as of late.

The next day in class, Constantine asks Charlemagne how he has been lately. Charlemagne replies that his dog had died a few days previously. Constantine then asks him if it has been bugging him, to which Charlemagne says “Yeah”. Constantine then realizes that Charlemagne would have done better had his dog died and he had not been depressed about his dog.

While this particular instance it would be difficult to cater to this students situation while not ignoring the other students, if it were possible and had Constantine catered to Charlemagne’s emotional state, Charlemagne would have done much better on the test, as he would have been more likely to study, not focus on his dog and not be depressed.

This clearly shows one of a great multitude of ways emotions can affect thought processes. While normally Charlemagne would be focused, his emotions got in the way. It is the responsibility of an educator to attempt to help students not to allow their emotions to affect them negatively as best as he or she can.

Conditioning

ptakattakc — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:12:24 +0000

Weekly Secret:
Effective parents and teachers understand that thoughtful use of the principles of behavioral learning can make a difference in establishing effective learning environments.

The weekly secret says it well. After all, isn’t one of the many definitions of a good education the augmented occurrence of desirable behaviors? A good math student is able to follow the mathematical laws he or she is taught, a good language student can speak using proper grammar and syntax. As a reward for this behavior, students get prestige, pride, and more opportunities. In some cases, the student is released from a punishment because of his or her studiousness. In all cases, however, good students are motivated d to be so by some form of stimulus.
There are many different kinds of stimulus that can motivate someone to do something. For a detailed list, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
Knowing all these kinds of reinforcement, a logical question arises: Which one is most effective? The answer to this question is a simple and single word: none. Merely one of them may be effective with one student or with one particular behavior, but the usage of only one in a teaching environment is equally effective as telling the same joke multiple times to the same people in order to get a laugh out of them; that is, it is not effective at all. However, the usage of many or even all of these methods of reinforcement can work much better than any one method can alone.
While this manner of teaching does have its definite limits (for example: extinction of a behavior when stimulus ceases), conditioning children is an essential and important educational tool that has been around for the human races entire history. By understanding the process, however, we have an advantage over our ancestors, that being the increased ability to create strategies utilizing this method to teach to our full potentials.

Learners

ptakattakc — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:55:22 +0000

WEEKLY SECRET:

Effective teachers and parents realize that collaborative and integrated cognitive strategy instruction facilitates the learning of information for ALL children in a myriad of contextual situations.

There are many different types of students in a classroom. In last week’s lecture, these types were defined as such:

Non-receptive:

“School makes no sense to my life!”

Resistant:

“I’m NOT going to learn any of this stuff; I’ll even get in YOUR way if I can!”

Rote:

“Just tell me what I have to know and I’ll memorize it for the test; then I’ll forget it!”

Receptive:

“I really like school; I’m eager to learn; but I’m not going to exert much effort after meaning!”

Meaningful:

“I’m constructing my knowledge; I use background information to help in learning; I have developed some very efficient strategies for acquiring new knowledge!”

While the ideal classroom contains only meaningful learners, the reality of the matter is many or even all of these types are present in a single class. The aim of a teacher, therefore, should be to encourage and enable his or her students to be meaningful learners.

This is very difficult. In order to be meaningful learners, students must find meaning in the information being learned, that is, they need to be able to apply or connect it with some part of their lives. Simply put, students need to be interested in a subject in order to be meaningful learners in that subject. Students do not have to even like the subject, but they do need to be interested in it. A good teacher, therefore, finds a way to get his or her students actively involved in the class by showing them how to apply the subject material to their lives.

A teacher who can do this will have an incredibly easy time teaching his or her students because an interested/active student will do much of the teachers work for him or her. In other words: in a classroom filled with active/interested learners, the teacher is not so much of a teacher as he or she is a resource, giving students information that they cannot find themselves.

Applying these principals to the real world, however, can prove difficult. Because of the undue importance on academic tracking through standardized tests, the American student’s actual education has suffered so that he or she can receive a high test score.

As the No Child Left Behind Act requires, the student body of a school must meet set standards, much of the time in the form of average standardized test scores. If the school does not meet these criteria, the government severely cuts funding for that school. Because of this, many teachers are forced to “teach to the test” (teaching a subject with an emphasis on doing well on the standardized test rather than being able to use the skills) to prevent funding cuts in their school. This promotes rote learning over Meaningful learning, thereby handicapping a large segment of the American student population by giving them an education of a notably lower quality.

The challenge of today, therefore, is to be able to inspire students to be interested and active in class (be meaningful learners) while also helping them do well on the test. While it would be better to do away with this predicament, I feel that this challenge can be overcome.

The trick is (I feel) to teach to the test, but do it as if one weren’t. That is, teach the material that will be on the test, but act as if one were simply teaching as if there were not a test.

This can be simply illustrated through example. Say the test is in April. A math teacher knows what material will be on the test, so he or she organizes his or her lesson plan to cover this material and applies it to the actual subject matter of the course (For example, the standardized test will have math problems relating to Pythagorean’s theorem, so the math teacher will cover the theorem when teaching students on the application of the unit circle).

Charts, Graphs, lists, and Step by Step Instructions.

ptakattakc — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:11:09 +0000

The way a teacher views thought processes is very important, as it is an important factor in the methods a teacher uses to teach his or her students. Also an understanding of the cognitive process is, for an educator, essential. I believe the reason why comprehending cognition is important is illustrated in figure 1:

This graph leads to an obvious question: Why are these two these things related?
To put simply, they are related because understanding a student’s cognitive process helps a teacher create teaching strategies that aid the process.
This brings another question to mind: What is a “Cognitive Process?”
A simple illustration from lecture can help explain:
(Please see frame 26 at: http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/courses/epsy201/Processing_Perspectives/Processing_Perspectives_files/frame.htm)
The illustration shows the technical process a person goes through when processing thought. The most important part for a teacher, however, is the transition between short and long term memory. Understanding how ones students do this best is essential in aiding the transition.
NOW, to return to strategies:
The way I see it, every individual learns everything differently. Therefore, I believe that the best way to help students remember and understand thing (be it math or science or artistic etc.) is to
1) Give them the information to be remembered and understood.
2) Ask them to give feedback and see what they remember and understand.
• If the students do not remember or understand well, briefly correct them as best you can and continue to step three. If they do understand it, continue to next step.
3) Give them the same information in a different way, ideally using a different array of senses to convey the info.
4) Repeat step two and three as many times as needed.
I believe that this method aids the cognitive process in multiple ways.
1) By asking for feedback, one is avoiding teaching students information that is incorrect, thus helping them know the correct things.
2) By repeating the information, one is making the students rehearse it, helping it get stored in the students long term memory.
3) In congruence with repetition aiding memory, having the students absorb the information using different sensory channels ensures that each and every student learns the info in the way that is best suited to him or her. Also it gives students who already understand the info another way to remember it.

Said concisely, understanding the cognitive process helps simplify teaching by creating a learning framework that is true for everyone. While every person learns, thinks, and acts differently and uniquely, each and every human being goes through the same cognitive process. Understanding this process allows teachers to create strategies to aid students through this process.

Culture

ptakattakc — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:13:44 +0000

DISCLAIMER: In the examples I use in this entry, I may use labels to convey a broad set of traits. While I realize that these labels can in no way be applied to any set of people accurately, I use them for the sake of simplicity.

CULTURE IN RELATION TO PEDAGOGY

Last week’s lecture, I feel, focused on getting us to understand how we answer one simple question, that being:

“How does culture affect teaching?“

The simplest answer I can come up with is that it affects the student teacher relationship. It is important to remember that culture can either be a boundary or a bridge to effective teaching. Understanding a student’s culture is paramount in effectively educating him or her.

SOME POTENTIAL BOUNDARIES:

LANGUAGE: Language boundaries must be overcome in order to teach effectively. Not only in the sense that a teacher needs to speak the same language as his or her students, but more specifically that a teacher must be able to clearly communicate with his or her students.

Language guides, aids, categorizes, and even limits thought: not only does it dictate how thoughts are communicated, but even how things are thought. Thus, a teacher must be able to be on the same page linguistically as his or her students to be the most effective teacher possible. This is not to say that a teacher must imitate the speech patterns of the students (for example, a teacher who speaks a Midwestern dialect does not have to use African American Vernacular English if that is what his or her students speak). The teacher simply needs to be able to convey information in a manner understandable by his or her students.

CUSTOMS: Every culture has them, and every culture’s customs are different. Also, customs of different cultures oftentimes clash with each other. Therefore, the customs of a culture must be understood by a teacher in order to assure that there is as little confusion as possible.

In some societies, it is unacceptable to touch another person with ones left hand. This needs to be understood so as to avoid offense.

VALUES: In order to effectively teach, a teacher must understand and teach to a particular cultures value system. To use a simple example, if a society values worldly success than a teacher may encourage his or her students to learn saying “This lesson will help you succeed by...” or if another society values honoring ones parents a teacher can encourage his or her students by saying “Doing well will make your parents proud”

Religion is a good example of this. A Roman Catholic may have a tougher time teaching at a school in America’s Bible Belt (very protestant and historically anti-Catholic) than a protestant would. This would not even have to be for discrimination against the teacher by the students or vice versa (although it could be): it would most likely simply be because of the different value systems that Catholics and Protestants have.

There are countless other examples of potential boundaries. Also, it is important to note that all of these potential boundaries can be bridges as well. Through understanding these, the teacher is more able to connect with the student and thus is more able to teach them.

HOW TO TURN THESE BOUNDARIES INTO BRIDGES:

This does not need to be categorized. The way to build bridges is to learn a student’s culture from the student his or herself. A teacher must abandon any preconceived notions about a student or group of students and examine each student only through experience with the student(s) to teach them the best. In extreme situations (a teacher attempting to teach in a culture completely unfamiliar to him or her) the teacher must be unafraid to ask questions and adapt; that is, the teacher must be willing to learn.

Intelligence

ptakattakc — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:16:18 +0000

Weekly Secret:
“Effective teachers and parents have a functional understanding of the idea of intelligence and of the developmental nature of intellectual growth.”

Intelligence, as so aptly worded by my group last week, is simply how well one does things. That is, those that do things well are intelligent and those that do things badly are not.

This is a very wide definition, and with good reason: intelligence can take a wide variety of forms, and the number of forms it can take is limited only by the number of tasks that can be performed. For example, an individual can do very badly academically but very well socially, vice versa, or do well or badly at both these areas. More specifically, a person can do well (or badly) at an extremely specific task (like drawing perfect isometric triangles). How well that person does these tasks simply reflect how intelligent that person is at said tasks and tasks closely related to it.

Howard Gardner has a theory that people have multiple intelligences. According to the theory intelligences can be put into groups (physiological, logical, musical, etc.) and that these groups are relatively independent from one another. The second part of the theory is what I disagree with. While people do have multiple intelligences, I feel that Gardner and other theorists advocating more than one intelligence (such as Robert Sternberg), in putting them into groups, made the exact same mistake that advocates of a single intelligence* (such as Charles Spearman) made: assuming that intelligence is constant throughout any area whatsoever. Those advocates of single intelligence did it with an entire person, while those advocating multiple did it with a section of a person. While Gardner believes what I believe to a certain extant, I believe he defines these categories too rigidly and does not pay enough attention the fact that many of these categories are related to one another.

My view on the matter is that intelligence can be compared to a string pulled tight (See figure 1).

FIGURE ONE

Each point on the string represents a different task the tasks being organized by similarity to each other: two points right next to each other represent very similar tasks, and two points far away represent dissimilar tasks. The top of the picture represents high intelligence, with intelligence decreasing as one moves down the picture.

When one excels in one particular task (let us say drawing), it is like someone pulling the string upwards from a single point (drawing is represented by the high point on the string). Since a person’s level of intelligence in one task affects their intelligence in related tasks, one can assume that one is also good at tasks similar to drawing (even things not traditionally associated with art, such as mathematics). However, the less and less similar a task is to drawing (the farther away on the string), the worse one is at this task. Just like a string stretched tight, when you pull it up by a single point (drawing) it affects points close to it. The farther away from the point you pulled it up by, the less it is affected by your pull.

Also, it is possible for people to be intelligent in multiple ways. In their cases, the string would be pulled up by multiple points rather than just one.

* Ones level of intelligence is throughout. That is, someone cannot be intelligent in one area and unintelligent in another, it is constant.

On the Social Life of Learners

ptakattakc — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:26:21 +0000

“Teachers and parents
MUST be concerned with
the personal and the social
aspects of children’s lives.”

The secret of the week is, as usual, true. After all, school is not solely academic. Social development is as if not more important than the academic aspect of school.

This is not to say that social activities should take precedent over academic ones in a school environment. However, it is important to note that a child’s (or anyone in school) performance is directly related to his or her social life. Taken at face value, this statement can be mistakenly interpreted as:

Good Social Life = Good Academic Life
OR
Popularity = Intelligence

It is essential that this misinterpretation is corrected. To be perfectly blunt, the “quality” of the social and academic life are not correlated directly, inversely, or otherwise. That is, one can have a good social life (many friends, happy, etc), while having a bad academic life (poor grades, etc.). The opposite is also true. The way social and academic life are connected, therefore, is quite different. It is not the quality of the students social life that affects academic achievement, but the pressures put on him or her in his or her life outside of school.

For example, if Greg (a super senior in high school) has a good social life (many friends, happy, etc.), but these friends are out of school and mock him for still being in high school, Greg may experience pressure to not do well (or drop out completely). This is because Greg wants to be like his friends (out of high school) and he does not like being mocked. Conversely, if Greg had younger friends who looked up to him, he could feel pressure to do well. In both cases, Greg’s academic performance is affected by his social circle.

Simply put, the only students that do academically well are ones whose social life either a) is lacking in negative pressure (he or she is not pressured to do badly or put school low on their “to do” list for any reason), b) is abundant in positive pressure (friends and family will be disappointed, need to get through school to follow dream, etc.), or c) a combination of the first two.

This brings me back to the secret of the week. Teachers and parents (educators) need to care about their children’s or student’s (learners) social life. While in practice it is very difficult, the theory is very simple. To maximize learning, educators must: a) minimize negative pressure, and b) maximize positive pressure. In other words: educators must create an environment conducive to learning. The only way to do this is to pay attention to the learners social life.