Once more unto the breach!...or...Our Last Weekend of Class

With the final weekend of class dealing with assessment, I cannot help but think of the term and its application to my return to academia. Did I successfully fulfill the high standards and goals that I set for myself? For now, a certain amount of assessment is purely a proximation and personal reflection of my work.

It has been many years since I have sat in a classroom and the return has been a bit of a challenge. I was unsure of my ability to jump back in and complete work that is comparable to that of my peers, but also, coming into a mostly female dominated profession would I be accepted into the group?

All of my fears have subsided in the past month. A tremendous amount of group work has shown me that my knowledge and perspectives are not completely out of line with other students'. My role in my groups has been solid and people have been very accepting of my suggestions and work. My participation has been of value to others. Assignments such as blogs and papers have been completed and have added to my learning.

It may take me a little longer and a bit more work, but I am happy in my new environment and look forward to each new learning experience. In truth, the final assessment of my work will come in the form of an actual grade. An 'A' may be the ultimate goal, but on a personal level I have proven to myself that yes I belong here and yes I can complete the work and perform well – this being a vital assessment to the beginning of my graduate school learning.

A Step Toward 21st Century learning.

Chapter 8: Personal Reflections, Comments, and AH HA Moments

Cooperative learning and you...and you...and you...and you...and you...

Sometimes I feel very old. My elementary schooling began about 1978 and I graduated form high school in 1991. Many things have changed since then. During my years in elementary school and beyond most of my learning was mostly via lectures. We sat there at our desks and listened. Maybe took notes. Quizzes would spring up. We would write book reports. And that was about it. There was so very little group work. Cooperative learning was non-existent. Having read the text and especially having researched my key assignment, I could not imagine my future classroom being without a plethora of social learning exercises.

I would have to say that the closest I ever came to experiencing the concepts of social constructivism would be in my sixth grade class. My teacher – Mr. O'Connell – had well honed question asking skills. Instead of merely giving us the answers, he would always try and get us to look at whatever problem we faced in a new light. His scaffolding made us a group of thinkers and I owe him for helping me to learn to see the many facets of a singular problem or issue. Which in turn leads into...

Give me an I! Give me a D! Give me an E – A -L! What's that spell?!?!

Having learned the skill of looking at problems in as many ways as possible, I have always been pegged as being a negative person. Especially in work environments, when faced with the possibility of changes I have always looked at positives and negatives. For some odd reason though, co-workers always seemed to center on my “negativity”. It was never a matter of thinking that something will not work, it was instead a way to seek out problems before they happened and thus implement the smoothest and most efficient change as possible.

Whether confronted with an issue at work or looking at a school project that needs completion, I have always identified the problem, figured out what needs to happen, examined options, contemplated the end results, and reflected – welcome to my learning process. Usually.

Open the door and put him in.

Incubation – the ability to think before reacting or answering – is an incredibly important skill to have and utilize. I have always opted to think before I act. Life is usually much easier, or at least less messy. As I was reading the topic I could not help but think of the management exam that has circulated for years with questions such as:

1. How do you put a giraffe in the refrigerator? (answer: open the door, put him in, close the door)
2. How do you put an elephant in the refrigerator? (did you say – open the door, put him in, close the door? Wrong. You have to take the giraffe out first!)

And the line of questions will continue in a similar fashion. Often, people tend to over think and over analyze things, when often, the correct answer is the one that might be the least complex. Or, as Sherlock Holmes said thanks to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

Chapter 6: Comments, Personal Reflections, and AH HA Moments

On the tip of my tongue...

The Sherrill Library – my home away from home - working on chapter five and making some notes in the margins for my “AH HA” moments. I was almost done reading about short-term memory when an idea for a commentary came to mind. With just a couple sentences to go, I finished the paragraph before jotting down my note. When I finished that portion of reading, any semblance of what I was going to write was completely gone from my short-term memory. Next time I know to make the notes before finishing.

Not just from left-field!

I sometimes wonder if all minds work the way mine does. To elaborate, often is the case that a friend or a family member will mention something and within mili-seconds my mind is thinking of something else entirely. Often, if I need to responding to my friend/family member my response is not even in the realm of what they were looking for. My answers very often require a path of thought - a schemata if you will – to detail how I got from point A to point B. My mind tends to link insignificant or mostly random items together and the links only seem to make sense to me.

Freshly back to school and wondering how I will ever remember everything!

My study habits have varied over the years. On thing that has always helped my studies has been the creation of acronyms or as the text calls them – initial-letter strategies. Coming from an accounting background there were many relatable terms that I could group together to recall at a later date, such as: what account had credit balances, what account had debit balances, and the different line items of financial statements. Thankfully, I have wiped most of that information from my memory instead to focus on education related initial-letter strategies. Of course some acronyms will always stick with me. As my brother was detailing the rainbow cake he was decorating for my niece's birthday he listed off the colors. I had to break the news to him that he forgot one color – indigo. I cited Roy G. Biv (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). My brother “the perfectionist” was forced to start over.

An open letter to the author...

Dear Dr. Slavin,

I have been enjoying your textbook thus far and have found it very useful in thinking not only og how a child may develop on varying levels, but also how it relates to me. As a returning student after seventeen years away from higher education, I have one question for you. Why sir, did you not put the segment entitled, “What Study Strategies Help Students Learn?” at the beginning of your text??? Seriously, I could have used this information about one hundred and sixty-nine pages ago!

Sincerely,

Jason A. Tavares

PS: I actually use a hybrid of PQ4R in conjunction with underlining. My concern is of course for other students.

PQ4R back to sixth grade!

Way back in the sixth grade I had my all-time favorite teacher standing before my class. Mr. O'Connell was instrumental in my being the reader and writer that I am today. Within the four walls of our classroom he introduced us to writing and studying more so than any teacher I had before and possibly since. While it may be true that I have taken much from the myriad classes that I have attended since sixth grade, Mr. O'Connell's basics have stuck with me the longest. Thank you Mr. O'Connell and thank you long-term memory!

Mr. O'Connell was a firm believer in writing each and every day and was especially an advocate of using our creativity on our writing. He demanded that we always question what we were reading and what we were about to write. Typically, he would launch into an almost word for word transcript of the famous Abbot and Costello bit – Who's on First? Each time we proposed an idea he would make us ask ourselves questions: who is your main character? what is the dilemma that is being faced? Where is the story set? Who is on third? No, I don't know is on third...and so on.

Dear Colleague -

Howdy Marcie -

I feel as though it has been too long since we last spoke. Everything on my end has been going swimmingly. My students have really responded to the ideas you had of incorporating music into my class. And they all LOVED the album of children's songs that you created. The kids have all been drawing robots in outer space eating donuts every chance they get. And they keep asking me to share my donuts, but you and I both know that nothing, nothing comes between me and my donuts.

Truth be told, I feel kind of guilty for how well things are going on my end when I know that you and your colleagues are struggling a bit. Getting your email made me wish I was closer so I could sit in on some of your classes and offer some suggestions. You did though given me quite an all encompassing overview of what your students seem to be struggling with. Working with students of such low socioeconomic status can be incredibly difficult at times. From what you have detailed of the area in which you are situated, it must be difficult for students to arrive in class each morning and feel any sort of motivation toward learning.

The difficulties of an unmotivated class upon entering the school is assuredly leading to difficulties in subsequent years. The curriculum you attached was a bit distressing. It sounds as though the administration has you pigeon-holed into an almost dictated teaching style. When will people learn that children learn when they are truly engaged and are an active part of both the learning and teaching experience? I know I always learned soooooo much by sitting in my chair all day and having my teachers talk AT me. Is my sarcasm thick enough there for you?

Fear not, for I am here to help you my dear friend! No knight in white armor, more just a geeky teacher in a flannel, button-down. Sitting at the laptop the other night I dove into the information you passed along. I broke out an old-fashioned notepad and went to work. After taking many notes of my own, I needed to truly see what the problem is that you are facing. If only all issues stemmed from a single problem source. Sadly, I think you are dealing with multiple problems in the lack of motivation for your students. I would suspect that you are facing three different reasons for the problems you are facing:

1. Your students are coming from homes of extremely low socioeconomic status. Imagine if you were leaving a home each morning where the majority of the money coming into the household had to be spent on the necessities of life – food, rent, utilities, and maybe clothing. You have routinely said that your students enter the class each morning as if they were just finishing working one job, just to start a shift at their next job. They are leaving a home environment bereft of happiness and coming to a class where they are tied to their seat for six plus hours a day.
2. You school district has formed some fairly strict guidelines as to the curriculum and methods of teaching. No Child Left Behind seems to have them worried that anything that is not rote in nature must be wrong. “TEACH THE TEST! TEACH THE TEST!” I am confident in saying that someday soon, legislation will be enacted to alleviate some of the mandates that NCLB has established. Needless to say, your students are simply not getting what they need from the environment that you are giving them. Woah! Woah, WOAAAHHHH...I know it is not strictly you. Stop with the pouty face. I know your hands are mostly tied, but I also know you and how you can be so incredibly creative! I have faith in you!
3. Lastly, your students just do not seem to be getting nor enjoying the material. This could perhaps just be that they are not fans of the assignments in front of them but it seems more accredited to the fact that they are not stimulated enough and being engaged enough to form any kind of link or emotional connection to what they are learning.

Knowing why the students are not performing well in your classes and in later years is key to figuring out ways in which the learning environment can be adapted to meet their needs. I truly feel that by tweaking the way you are teaching them you will see a tremendous impact. I can already hear you saying, “But Jason, the administration...” Yes I understand fully. But there must be an approach that you can take that will address the concerns of the curriculum at meeting the demands of standardized testing while at the same time making sure that your students are active participants in the learning process. And trust me, they will be anxious to come to class each and every day! No, I do not sound like one of those late night informercial guys...

Now it is time for you and I to hop into Mr. Peabody's “Way Back Machine”. Recall back if you will to those early days of undergrad and then even in graduate school as you sat in your psychology classes and began your study of learning theories. One of the earliest theories belonged to this Vygotsky guy. Remember him? I always pictured him in a big furry Russian hat and a massive beard and mustache. I think I actually checked one day and was greatly disappointed that my idea of him in my mind was nowhere close to how he actually looked. Oh well, in my mind he will always have that big black beard. Anyway, Vygotsky was a huge proponent on social learning - that students should be brought together in groups where they can and will learn in a very active manner both from the educator/expert and from each other. In a sense you as the teacher would lead groups of students in learning activities and would act more as a facilitator than a giver of straight-forward facts and figures. The technical term for what you would be doing would be either mediated learning or scaffolding. I personally prefer scaffolding as it conjures mental images of an actual scaffold along a building. That scaffold is not there to do the work of the construction workers, but it facilitates and helps them get the job done. Sometimes these little mental pictures help me keep all the theories clear.

Right about now you are saying, “Yeah great but how does this help alleviate the problem and how can I bring these concepts into my classroom? Also, I wonder if I have time to go pick up some mint chocolate chip ice cream?” Knowing me as you do, I am a huge fan of ice cream. Go grab some and come back and we will figure this all out together. Fear not, I will be here when you return.

Back? That was nice and quick. I barely noticed you were gone. Hahaha!

Okay, back to work. Think first and foremost of the environments that your students are exposed to outside of their educational setting. Not very cheery are they? You need to get them out of their chairs. You need to get them moving and interacting. Get them talking and engaging in discussions. Social learning will accomplish all that and so much more. You had noted specifically that your students were having difficulty with their reading of Tom Sawyer. No lie, I am happy to hear your administration has embraced the classics once more. My curriculum is slowing doing the same. As you sit there with your students desks all lined up and spread out, and you ask questions and have them read in turn, how is that making the environment any more exciting or engaging from their home life? Spin those desks around and have them form their own reading clubs. Break them down and balance out the groups. By balancing out the groups I mean put a stronger student in each group that can help mediate their group. They can be your little mini-scaffolds! A scaffold within a scaffold!

Now, as each of your better students begins a discussion in their groups you can act as the overall mediator. You can listen in and ask questions of each group or of the class as a whole. Try and stay away from yes or no questions or ones that have a definitive answer. Kids love to think and rationalize. You will be amazed at what they will come up with with just a small nudge.

I have the utmost confidence though that with your scaffolding, you will get them into the best learning environment while at the same time still maintaining the standards set forth by your administration and curriculum. I am shaking my fists at those standardized test!

Now, you are going to find that once you begin these kinds of social learning practices that kids are going to start to extrapolate those methods and utilize them in other subjects. Perhaps you could also have mini science labs and students can all work experiments together? Small group math clubs anyone? Often I think that students are scared to voice opinions to their teachers. It can be a scary thing to raise a hand and put your thoughts and opinions out to a teacher who hold your grade in their hands. On a peer-to-peer learning level though, they can speak freely to each other and offer more creative thoughts and solutions. You will see that they will quickly begin to expand their thinking and become immersed in the learning environment. They will walk through your door each morning beaming and excited to be there. They will be enthusiastic and craving the next foray into social learning.

Having read all of the above I hope that you find the value in social learning that I and my students have. Seeing their enthusiastic faces as we enter each new learning unit is worth more than all the Stafford Loans I have ever had to apply for. I hope in my heart that you can put some of these ideas into practice. Once your students are engaged they will be craving more and more learning. It is your job to guide them along the process not force feed them facts and opinions. Do me a favor, give it a try over the course of the next few weeks. If you struggle with lesson plans, email or better yet, call me. Just be mindful of the time zone differences.

Your friend and comrade in arms,

- Jason

Chapter 5: Personal Reflections, Comments, and AH HA Moments

At least they did not 'shush' me.

“However, you are also learning that educational psychology is interesting or dull, useful or useless. Without knowing it, you are probably learning about where on the page certain pieces of information are to be found. You might be learning to associate the content of this chapter with unimportant aspects of your surroundings as you read it, such as the smell of books in a library or the temperature of the room in which you are reading. ” Slavin page 116.

After I finished reading the above I let out a louder than appreciated laugh in the Sherrill Library. The students around me may have thought I was a bit “off my rocker” as they may have been able to tell that I was reading Educational Psychology. I sighed and simply had to shake my head though because the quote above was true. Learning can take place in many forms and can happen without paying it too much attention. Freshly back in academia I am struggling to try and get all my reading done and to adequately remember the myriad definitions that I am confronted with in not one or two text books, but five. Some concepts are interwoven amongst the differing texts, but most feel fresh and have taken quite a bit of work to wrap my arms around. I am getting there but my learning has been a slow process, and somewhat unconsciously I am adapting.

The story of my life?

Facing the struggle between “having to” versus “wanting to” it can be said that life is filled with such battles. The Premack Principle always seems to be in place.

“Eat your veggies and you will get some dessert.”

“Clean your room and you can go the movies.”

“Do your homework and you can play video games.”

“Sell six cellphone plans and you will get an extra personal day.”

The concept of motivating a person – child or adult – to undertake an undesirable task is not a new concept and has probably been around since caveman Grog told his son to throw the mammoth bones outside the cave and then he can paint on the walls. The Premack Principle works and perhaps over time children will see the value of completing those enjoyable tasks beyond the obtaining of a pleasurable activity.

“Thanks for showing up – here's your trophy!”

The above is actually the title of a book that I have begin to outline. Will it ever be completed? I hope so. May it sit in the desktop folder of my laptop for periods of time? Certainly. Is the notion that kids are gratuitously over-rewarded for very little actual real activity or performance something I think of often? A resounding “YES!”

I understand that using extrinsic reinforcers can yield some positive results especially as motivational factors, but all too often organizations seem to jump to the ultimate prize and give it to all participants as opposed to really rewarding performance.

My assorted nieces and nephews all participate in various activities at my siblings' behest: sports, musical endeavors, art. In every instance that I can think of, everyone gets a trophy or a big ribbon for having participated. While no one wants to hurt the feelings of a child, the reward should be in-line with the performance.

If I finish reading and commenting on Chapter 5, I can go home and watch the Patriots game.

Throughout my life I have always self-regulated and self-reinforced my behaviors. Even as an adult rewards are necessary. The overbearing sense of needing to do what has to be done forces me to accomplish activities. Every so often though a really difficult, annoying, or exhuasting set of tasks will afford me the thought, “Wow, I worked my behind off and got everything done ahead of schedule! I deserve...a couple of new books or a video game as reward.” I learned early on in my educational and professional worlds that I am responsible for my own actions and the actions that I undertake have affects upon my life and those around me. But why not make those actions a bit easier and reward myself from time to time?

Reflection upon my learning thus far...

Sitting here on Monday evening, I find myself thinking about the learning that I have accomplished in the past couple of months. Having been out of the educational environment for so long, I was worried that I would be unable to get back into the swing of things. The class I had this evening was my “Literacy – The Integration of the Language Arts” and I had to give a sixty second snapshot on the topic of shared reading. All of the presentations for the last three classes had been power point presentations. Me, well I am not a fan of such things. One thing that I have taken though from my “Psycho-Social Perspective in Education” (to be referred henceforth as Psych) learning has been that a creative teaching approach is often more memorable that a mere power point presentation and lecture. Tonight I prepared a ten page children's book. I drew pictures an colored them for every page and wrote the script that detailed the process of shared reading and also important aspects of why it is utilized. My class and my professor enjoyed the book and my creativity. I do not think it will be so easily forgotten. After tonight I feel comfortable in saying that yes, I can or have gotten back into the swing of things.

Coming from a background of the business world, classes in my undergraduate program were all straight up lectures that met twice a week. We were fed the information and very little of the learning was self-driven.

My Psych class though has been a horse of a different color. The weeks leading up to the first weekend saw me reading like mad and taking notes and preparing my journal's AH HA moments. Sick of those yet? Never before have I had to partake in so much self-driven learning. Since that first weekend class I cannot help but think of those students in India (?) who were learning from the computer terminals. The computers acting as the experts in their learning and giving feedback. With my journal entries and paper I look forward to such feedback. Luckily, I was able to obtain a great deal of feedback from students and educator during that first weekend. Now, this may sound as though I need a lot of positive reinforcement, but I have always been an independent worker and self-driven, but that has never fully been applied to the scholastic setting.

As I had mentioned, my undergraduate studies were all driven by lectures and the occasional group project - maybe one per class per semester. With Psych though we jumped right in and were thrown into group learning and I loved it. Obtaining different perspectives and ideas was amazing. The sharing of opinions and experiences was almost more valuable to my understanding of the classroom I will someday be in more than the actual textbook.

Do not get me wrong, I have used the textbook to a great advantage and that along with leadership from my instructor and assorted assignments, a fairly solid scaffolding is in place. In many ways though, I have had to utilize personal scaffolding to accomplish many tasks. More often than not I have been asking myself probing questions and then seeking out the answers. My mind just keeps trailing over to my research paper and how it had been so long since I had written anything even remotely close to that style. I had to keep pushing myself and asking myself how to improve what I had written. I kept looking at the video and my paper and asking what I missed and how could the activity been more beneficial.

At the same time though, the actual writing of the paper was extremely difficult as has been fitting all the work from my classes into these weeks in October. With such a full schedule, time has become a precious commodity. Budgeting my time between work and two classes has been trying at times. I loved the first weekend of Psych and I took so much from that weekend. Now though I feel as everything is being squished into just a few short weeks. Having never taken a weekend class in my life, I was curious how this class would proceed. While I have been able to keep pace with the studies and learning, there is some part of me that misses the routine of going to class each week and making the personal connections with fellow students and professors. There was a tremendous deal of social learning in that first weekend - I look forward to more in the coming weekend - but I wonder how it would be handled on a week to week basis. I am still contemplating if I like the weekend class structure more or less than the standard weekly classes. Perhaps the assessment will be improved and completed once Psych comes to a close.

Learning seems to becoming fast and furious though. Between classes, textbook readings, projects, and research, I often find myself questioning if there is a bit of an overload going on as concepts seem to be seeping into other facets of my life. One of my nephews has just begun his freshman year of high school. After I helped him with a history paper in early September – he earned an A – he turns to me to review what he has written and to ask questions. In place of giving him answers, I turn to more of a system of scaffolding and asking him leading questions that have him thinking about what he has written and how it can or should be improved. Sometimes the required knowledge is there, but the right questions need to be asked. Each time I sit with him I cannot help but think of the future when I am able to help an entire classroom as opposed to just one student.

Learning has always been something that I have valued. The actual usage of said learning in applications of everyday life is priceless. From the just a few short weeks of studying learning theories and concepts I have had real life opportunities to put them into practice. I do not think there is anything more valuable than being able to learn and use that to improve myself and those around me. Thank you.

Chapter Four: Personal Reflections and AH HA moments.

“On average”

That children of low socioeconomic status (SES)would be less well prepared at the start of their educations than children of higher SES is a natural conclusion to reach. The lower a family is on the SES “scale” the more likely it is for family earnings to be spent on the necessities such as: living accommodations, food, and utilities. Personally, books are a necessity for every family, but there are way to have access to books that are absolutely free! My troupe of librarian friends would be severely angered at me if I did not endorse the function that a town or county library can serve children and their families.

The text uses the term “on average” when detailing how children of lower SES families are less prepared because there will always be exceptions. My family was one such exception. Growing up my family was certainly not rich, but we were not the extreme either. We always had a home, food, electricity and all the basic requirements of leading a healthy life. We always had books in the house and we made frequent trips to one of several town libraries. My favorite town library was first and foremost a children's library but there was certainly plenty for adults to peruse as well. To this day I can still feel and hear the floorboards creek under my feet and I can still smell the books.

There are always alternatives even if you are of lower socioeconomic status. With the right help a child can have many of the same opportunities that a child of higher SES might have had.

Summer reading had me a blast! Summer reading happened so fast!

The previously mentioned single room school turned library, in fact called The Watertown West Branch Library was my home away from home. The library was a fun and safe place to be and I actually looked forward to going and picking out my summer reading materials and partaking in the summer reading club.

Summer was normally seen as a time of being out and playing at the park. I always preferred a balance. I loved baseball and running around the park, but my love of reading also needed to be fed. Each and every year from early elementary onward we were assigned summer reading selections. The great thing was that I could actually choose from a list of many books. During the school year my reading selections were determined by my teachers and the standard curriculum, and being the slow reader that I was/am I had very little free reading time during the school year. Summer gave me flexibility and choice. Browsing over the different possibilities made me feel like the king of the library. I would make my first selection, and my second and my third.

A Community – Whether We Kids Liked it or Not

My city's schools were models of the area I grew up in. We all knew everyone. Our parents were friends or at the very least friendly. We saw each other in school and at the park and when we went out to eat. You would think that we could all use some quiet time alone in our own households, right? It was not meant to be.

My elementary school loved holding all kind of family events. James Russell Lowell Elementary had picnics and book fairs, tons of parent's nights, assemblies where students had to attend and parents were encourage to join. Parents took turns helping in classrooms or working small jobs around the school. After school activities were mostly run by our parents as they were Troop Leaders and Den Mothers.

Parents loved being part of the PTA and helping guide our schools to meet the standards that would benefit their children not just for the day, but for the future. The vital community atmosphere was created and fostered by involvement of many – parents, teachers, administrators, community leaders, and government officials.

“The Julie L. Phenomena”

Freshman year of high school I was in Honors English and this worried me. My junior high teachers felt I had a knack for writing and I seemed to be writing at an advanced level – there were even a couple of occasions when at the beginning of the school year my new teachers asked me how much I help I had at home. The answer was always, “Very little.” I prided myself on doing my own work and doing the best that was possible with my skill set. Teachers always felt my writing had a sense of “being written by an older person.” My teachers were always relieved after my first in class essays were written and the writing was of the same feel, tone and quality as my homework.

Sitting in my high school English class though, things were different. Mrs. K – my teacher - was quite a different person. The class was not highly structured and there was a very free feeling when it came to discussions. Actually, let me back up a minute and mention that in this class of twenty-five students there was a total of three boys. Most of the girls had their own little circles that they stuck to. Mike and I had known each other since kindergarten and while not best friends, we got along well enough. The third boy in the class was a transfer from the West Coast and had very similar attitudes as our teacher. Now, I had previously mentioned a rather free feeling inside the classroom and this was true if you were anyone other than myself or Mike. The girls in the room could wander about and hold discussions. They could shout out answers. They could come and go as they please. Things for Mike and I were very different though. Throughout those first months of class Mrs. K. would routinely chastise us for doing the exact same things that all the girls in the class were doing. If my hand was not up in the air to ask my question it would be noted and points deducted for the day. If Mike or I were confused, she would say to check with someone else after class.

And then there was Julie L. Each and every time we had any kind of assignment, Mrs. K. would reach into her stack of papers and present us with Julie's essay. Each time Mrs. K. would read Julie's paper aloud so that the whole class could here what she had written. My work had always been of high quality, yet never had there ever been any mention of what I had written and more often than not I was staring at a C or even a D. Trying to talk to Mrs. K. proved futile as she had once said to me, “Men have had it easy for centuries.”

Luckily, my locker happened to be right next to the office for the head of the English Department for all of the city's schools. She had loved my older brother as a student and came to know me as well. She asked one day how English was going and I showed her my C. She asked to take a look at my paper to offer some help and I gladly accepted. The following morning as I was packing my jacket into my locker. The department head handed me my paper with a newly scribbled mark on it...a B+. She said my work was much better than I had been given credit for and that I should keep working. It was nice to know that someone cared.

Needless to say, English class was very different from that point until the end of the year as it was a much more balanced classroom. And would you believe, Mrs. K. even read one of my short stories to the class.

And then there were my first MTELS...

This past July saw me having to take the communication and reading portions of the MTELs for my graduate school admissions process. The day of the test was a rather warm one and of course Arlington High School was without air conditioning. All test takers were shown to their testing rooms and we took our assigned seats. The female to male ratio in my classroom was 6:1. Sitting there in silence waiting for the exam to start I made an observation and asked aloud to those around me, “Do you think they put all four of us guys in a corner by ourselves for a reason?” Did they?

Chapter Three Personal Reflections, Comments, and AH HAs!

“To Be or Not to Be?” Erik Erikson Hamlet

Right away in chapter 3 we see a presentation of Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development. Immersing myself in his stages, there seems to be a gnawing at the back of my brain. These stages seem so familiar. Referring back to my Child Development class in high school I am certain we studied Erikson, but these was something more. Having always been an avid – yet slow reader, I found myself constantly thinking of Hamlet and how his character developed.

Starbuck to Adama, come in...

When looking at how children develop socially and emotionally, the importance of play cannot be ignored nor undervalued. Children are very social and they must develop strong and supportive peer relationships. A child's interaction with peers mostly involves play. During the many forms of playing, a child's mind will work and be creative, they can craft stories, have discussions, resolve conflict and or course form relationships. Thinking back to my kindergarten days, I remember a long running series of cooperative play that at times would turn into parallel and associative forms.

It was the late 70's and Battlestar Galactica, starring Lorne Greene of Bonanza fame, ran for a whopping twenty-two episodes. The science fiction series was all my friends and I could talk about. Most of the kids in my kindergarten class began a running series of playing that found us creating our own starships out of these very colorful interwoven blocks. Each one of us took on the role of a different character from the show and girls and boys were involved. We all looked forward to the moments of free time that we had so that we could continue our stories.

Things that I remember about our playing:

1. In that first year of schooling there were already delineations between the popular kids and the rest of us. Most of the popular children were very athletic and outspoken. Also, they were not the best behaved. Then we had children such as myself who enjoyed sports but also had a love for being creative and reading. Our Battlestar play though broke down the boundaries between the groups and had us all working together to beat the evil Cylons (the bad guys from the TV series).
2. Often we would all be involved in some big adventure, but I recall certain times when we broke up into small groups to continue our own stories. Some of these peers I was in classes with all the way through senior year of high school and while we were not all best of friends, we always showed a great deal of respect for each other as opposed to kids from other schools who were incorporated into our classes as the years progressed. I would like to think that the mutual respect we exhibited was a byproduct of our conquering of the Cylon Empire.

It was...Injun' Joe!

It was a cool winter's day in Mrs. Bender's third grade class. The wind was rattling the windows and the radiator was whistling ever so slightly. Lunch was settling in our stomachs and the last couple of hours of the school week were in front of us. As was the practice, we all took out our copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mrs. Bender would often read to us but she especially enjoyed having us read to the class as well. There was no set order to whose turn would be next and you never knew how much you would have to read. You could be called upon at any time to pick-up reading where the student before you had just finished.

This particular afternoon I was an early pick, either second or third in line to start reading. Being a slow reader but one who enjoyed the visuals that books provided, reading aloud to the class was always a bit stressful. Mark Twain though has always been a favorite and I immersed myself into the story at hand, began reading. Paragraph after paragraph passed and many pages later I was still reading. Thinking back on that day I wonder if perhaps Mrs. Bender had dozed off for a “few minutes”. Tom and Becky were lost in an abandoned cave and they were shocked to find that there was another person in the cave, “It was...Injun' Joe!” As I read the line, I must have built up a bit of intrigue or suspense for the class. There was a gasp and I turned around and saw all eyes fixed on me. Mrs. Bender was smiling and she chose another student.

After the school day ended a couple of classmates came up to me and commented how they loved how I had read and that they were surprised, startled, and scared all at the same time over what was happening in the story. It is amazing how influential those words from my peers were not just upon my concerns of reading in front of a crowd, but they truly helped my overall self-esteem. The smile on my face was enormous.

Just Go With the Flow? (weekly journal assignment)

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They year was 1992 and the Chicago Bulls were playing the Portland Trailblazers in the NBA Finals. It was the first game of the series and the match-up of Jordan versus Drexler was compared to Frazier versus Ali. What happened though was what so many teams were accustomed to - Michael Jordan taking control and dominating the game. Scoring 35 points in the first half including sic three-pointers, Jordan turned to the broadcasters and shrugged not knowing how he could be so hot. Michael was “in the zone” - term used by athletes when they reach an almost blissful state where one action blends seamlessly and effortlessly into the next, and the next. Being in the zone is also known as flow.

Flow – a concept coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – is detailed by Jill Suttie in her article Can Schools Help Students Find Flow as “a heightened state of being, where we're so absorbed in a task that concerns like time, food, and self-consciousness disappear....associated with high levels of creativity and optimal performance in a wide variety of activities, and that it evokes feelings of happiness and even euphoria.” It is safe to say that we have all had experiences with flow or being in the zone.

Having grown up playing sports there were moments in games where everything seemed to slow down and my movements were natural and almost subconsciously driven. Having the ball roll off my fingers to kiss the backboard and seeing the bottom of the net move or scrambling back and forth on the tennis court swinging and making contact with every tennis ball or hitting my stride on my graduate school essay are all examples of flow. Just the other day at work I had several projects to do and each one seamlessly moved to the next and their accomplishment was mostly unhindered. When I was finally finished I looked up at the clock and was surprised at how quickly time had passed and how much was accomplished – I smiled.

How can schools help their students find flow in the learning process? Can students feel the same satisfaction working on a science project that they find on the playground or after finishing an amazing drawing? Suttie sets forth that in public schools where mandated standardized testing occurs, students are mostly exposed to a very regimented education. Teachers all too often are having to teach the test as opposed to exposing their students to a more natural and independent means of learning.

What can be done to open up the classrooms to an environment that fosters flow? A classroom where teachers are mentors who guide students with a greater choice in their education is one the can foster flow.

While legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 sought to even the playing field and enforce standardized tests, the rigid guidelines are hampering the natural learning process. Flow is a state of happiness and bliss and sitting in a room with a rigorous lecture and rote memorization does in no way, shape or form aid in grabbing a child's interest. All children should have an education based around standards and at the same time there needs to be more. Educators need to be able to lead students into the process of learning instead of forcing the intake of dates, facts and other “boring things”. The big scary word “education reform” may just be necessary in order to bring more flow into the classroom.

Even with a change to legislation, flow is not something that is easily taught. And where does the teaching start? While flow will happen when the skills match the process, how does one lead a student into obtaining that blissful state? Teachers will need to be taught. For many it may be an unnatural concept to give the students choices. I think we have all had a teacher or professor who has been so set in their ways that you could sit in their class a decade apart and feel as though time had sat still. Educators must be taught the ways and means of creating a classroom where flow inducing activities are as common as peanut butter and jelly. Forgetting for a moment the abundance of nut allergies.

The classroom should be a vehicle for student happiness. A happy child learns more efficiently and craves more knowledge. A review and revision of enacted legislation, along with more education for teachers can aid the process of turning our classrooms into places where students flock to because they want to, not because they have to.

Unrelated to school...

It appears that I have had people check out my blog from as far away as the United Kingdom and Germany. Howdy folks! And I will say, "GO ARSENAL GUNNERS!"  :)

Are you the Key Master?

Sitting in the library working on my key assignment paper. Ohhh, only been about 18 years since having to do anything even remotely close to this. Talk about a learning experience...hahaha

Group Pressure

Some humor courtesy of Candid Camera for a Saturday morning! But still interesting to see how people within even an informal group setting will conform even though they clearly know that the actions being taken do not make sense.

Maslow chat with Batman...

Weekly Assignment 1

The past few days I have kept coming to the weekly assignment and told myself, "Okay, I am going to do this..." Right as I am about to start I decide against it. Perhaps it was some sort of irrational inner fear that being my current age, thirty-nine, that my reaction times might be that of an eighty year-old man. Instead of the assignment I kept going back to scour the archives for journals as the key assignment looms all too close on the horizon. Tonight though was to be the time as I had to move on to other things in the course of the next week.

PART: One
Here I sat in the Sherrill Library and I began the test. As each new test finished I had to chuckle. The following is a crop of the screen capture of my results:

Starting the first test I found myself wondering where the dot would be. Would it be random? How long would it be on screen for? Am I too old for this? My result of .39 seconds was actually what I thought to be fairly decent. As there is no one else here to compare to, I can only compare to how I did on the second test.

Test two added the floating designs and I was worried that I would get into moments of looking at the pretty colors. The distractions are afterall the idea of the test - to see how the added stimulus affected our reaction times. Yeah, not sure this was supposed to happen, but I improved to .359 seconds. Chuckling, I was curious what this says about me.

Next came test three and it included a warning that some of the images were meant to cause an emotional reaction. Perhaps I am without emotion, a regular Vulcan (wait they have emotion just choose to suppress them - yes I am a dork) as my reaction time dropped to .33 seconds.

Now I was getting cocky. Part three with basic math problems? Psssh...no problem at all. I was able to answer each question easily enough with time to spare but yet my time slowed to .398 seconds. 

According to the unit, current research has established "...that both hemispheres are involved in almost all cognitive tasks." Unit 1 Text Section 2. If we leave out the theory of left-brain versus right-brain, perhaps my brain is just better equipped and developed to process more creative and emotionally driven situations and tasks? Analytical problems present a slightly great challenge but yet the differences between reaction times appear marginal to my untrained eye.


PART: Two
On set one I really seemed to get hung up on the police car. Not sure why, but my brain simply could not process and remember where the T was. It was not until the last picture or so that my eyes and brain knew exactly where to look.

None too surprisingly, my reaction times improved for repeated images while the newer pictures truly seemed to throw me off as I would be expecting an image I had already seen.

The second set, the Sharp set also gave me some difficulties. There was one image in particular that truly slowed down my processing. The picture of the "black hole" acted like a black hole of image processing as it sucked my grey matter out of existence or maybe into some parallel dimension. Can I please have it back?

I was happy to see that even with the black hole, my reaction times improved with the images.

When progressing through the blurred set it seemed like all the T's just jumped out at me. I spotted each and every one with relative ease. The difference between the new images and the repeated images was minimal. According to the results page, people with dyslexia often have an easier time with the blurred set - this statement made me think.

Over the years I have had difficulty in learning, but never to the point or in terms of possibly being diagnosed with dyslexia. I am a slow reader but have improved. I am a very visual person and that also slows me down to a point. But how do those fit in to this blurred set? 

The final set was the abstract set. As soon as I launched the practice, I knew that I would be in for trouble. I have always had rather poor vision and that will always be the case. My eyes are always tracing letters while reading and that slows me down. I read a lot and that certainly has helped train my brain to simply acknowledge what letters and words are in front of me as opposed to challenging the validity of every letter. I knew my brain would react "violently" to this set.

While taking this test my eyes kept running over each and every angle. The black and white would blur together. Then it seemed like the gears kicked-in and  my brain decided to "look for smaller angles". Actually I guess that while this is what I was thinking, I meant smaller radials from the angle. The unusual part is, I recall consciously thinking this as my mind started to undertake the new task and I felt as though my ability to find the T's improved. On the other hand, I could not tell you which pictures were repeats and which were new. I would have to attribute this to my searching each shape as opposed to seeing the "big picture".

Chapter Two Personal Reflections, Comments, and AH HAs!

On Piaget, the Past and How it Relates to Me...

On the table before me lay Education Psychology by Robert Slavin. Flipping through the pages I began recognizing phrases here and there:. Piaget and stages of cognitive development, Vygotsky's theories, and of course Piaget versus Vygotsky. Trying to access where in my brain I recalled these terms from, I must have unlocked some sort of mental filing cabinet. Memories returned in a flood. Recalling back to roughly 1990, I took a seat in a classroom of roughly 20 high school girls and just one other boy besides myself. There we all sat around the edge of an amalgamation of tables, and in walked our teacher and she began, “Welcome to Child Development.” Traditionally an all girls class, this semester two boys had joined. The allure of all those girls might have helped – I admit that was not a bad thing in my eyes – but also, I had recently became an uncle for the first time. My nephew was this cool little guy who was almost completely foreign to me in so many ways. But how was he to grow? What was to come next? I was curious and I wanted to learn.

Thinking back, I am not sure how much that class helped me with my nephew. What it did help with though was seeing children and people in a different light. I began recognizing different behavior patterns and wondering where they fit into different stages of development. Some may argue that the emotional development of high school boys might be at about the same level as a ten year-old. They may be right. I admit, we all have our moments.

From my Child Development class I am sure I learned much – I wonder how much was retained. Luckily I can learn the information all over again. Where are you long-term memory when I need you?Recalling those days there was an assignment with an egg of course (my baby for a week that I took care of), many quizzes were taken, and we embarked on a trip to Perkins School for the Blind. What I do not seem to recall though was if there was ever any look into our individual development and how we could have related that to differing theories.

Progressing through Piaget's sensorimotor stage is not a span that I seem to recall, but “luckily” my family is fairly adept at oral history – truthfully, we love to sit around the dinner table and tell incredibly embarrassing stories about each other. Often, my mother will detail how I was a very “hands-on” child”. Apparently, I had an affinity for soft and silky things and was always compared to Linus and his security blanket. The sense of touch was calming and to this day when I am nervous or anxious, certain sensations still relax me.

Escapes for a short break...

Well, I took a short break to talk with my mother. I asked her, “Ma, what was I like as a child?” Her first response was a laugh. After about ten seconds of hilarity, she caught her breath and told me that as early four years old I was a bit...unusual.

“But not unusual in a bad way!” she said as quickly as she could. At this point she then described me as a child that beat to my own drum. I loved to draw and create stories either on paper or with my action figures. My eyes and my brain enjoyed dissecting the things in the world around me. Apparently, my observational skills ruined several surprise birthday and Christmas presents over the course of those early years. Supposedly, even at the start of elementary school I noticed and perceived the little things that most people missed. When my sister swore to my parents that she did not in fact cut through the woods on the way home, I asked her why her shoes were then covered in mud. She was not happy and I wonder if she will ever forgive me. Overall, if I had to relate Piaget's stages to my personal development, I would have to say that they just did not fit my experiences. Just like every child is different, not every theory applies to all.

Vygotsky and Why Some of His Theories Still Seem Applicable to Me Today...

Reading the theories that Vygotsky proposed truly has me thinking. Vygotsky felt that supplied teaching and social learning was a precursor to development - a child needed to be taught and then he/she would internalize and gain a better understanding, thus leading to development. A core concept that I firmly believe in is his zone of proximal development. In this zone a child has mastered a certain set of skills and is ready to undertake a new objective, but in order to achieve the task at hand, guidance is necessary. The instruction obtained will then be incorporated into the child's set of skills leaving them ready for the next task ahead.

As I mentioned earlier, many years ago I was graced with a nephew. Since then I have been graced six more times with as assortment of nieces and nephews. Years have come and gone and I have seen them grow up to be college students, high school students and elementary students. One thing that they all have in common – other than having an amazing uncle – is that they have all needed guidance in their learning and development. I recall sitting with my nephews and helping them read books that were beyond their skill set, yet reading along I helped them understand the words they were reading. When they were advancing their math skills there were concepts just a bit beyond their reach that they needed just a tad more guidance with. And when it came to their writing, well, they needed all the help they could get. I cringed when reading my nephew's first foray into high school freshman history papers. Needless to say I sat him down and we went sentence by sentence through his paper as I explained things such as: punctuation marks, capitalization, and the fact that sentences should actually have meaning and significance.

And Now for Some Language and Literacy Bits...

• Oral language – It is essential for parents, teachers, brothers/sisters and everybody else to engage children in their oral language development. Many children love to talk about their day and the world around them. Posing open-ended questions will allow for a broader range of interaction.
• Reading – Learning to read is probably the single most important facet in all of learning. The ability read is vital in learning other subjects. While it may be said that mere lecturing can be a source of learning, the ability to explore and read on one's own will create a vast sea of knowledge and allow a child to seek out any and all topics that they have an interest in. Children should be immersed in reading from as early an age as possible. Homes and schools should be flooded with children's books, magazines, menus, comic books, picture books, pop-up books and anything else that encourages a child to read. Reading needs to be an activity that children look forward to and want to be an active participant in.
• Writing – Reading and writing should be as interwoven as inhaling and exhaling.