The last few days my group and I worked vehemently to design a lesson that would engage a younger demographic of students. Being that my group members and I had never taught students who were younger than 13 years of age, we were a little bit nervous. I myself had never taught a student under the age of 16, so this experience was quite new to me. The lesson we taught sought to blend CTE marketing and business standards with that of their 5th grade reading and writing standards. Our approach was to have the students redesign simple products to be able to market them for profit.
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At the conclusion of chapter 5, the author asks the following question, "Imagine you’ve found out that a kid you know is really interested in astronomy (or cooking, or video games, or fashion, or baseball, or music, or police work, or whatever). How would you help her go into depth in this area? What might she learn by exploring her interest more deeply?" This question is really interesting to me because I absolutely consider the interests of my students whenever I design a lesson. Within my educational framework, I try to accommodate all of my students interests, usually in one month cycles.
Today in class we reviewed and practice APA citations and annotations. It had been a long time since I used APA style citations but I was quick to pick it back up. I had prior experience with APA format and citations from my undergraduate program in psychology, however we were never rigidly held to the APA standard.
At the conclusion of chapter 3, the author asks the question, "What would a school that was "a little more human" look like to you? This question had me reflecting on the inter personality of my current school site that I work. One primary thing I would incorporate in a school would be the greeting of students by the administration as they enter the school site. On top of that, the administration, as well as the teachers should know every single student's name. It would be a massive undertaking but I believe the payout would be extremely beneficial for the school culture.
Today I was tasked with shadowing a student from French Camp Elementary School. At first, I dreaded the task as I have only had exposure to high school students in an academic setting. However, once I arrived and comfortably assimilated myself into the controlled chaos, I began to enjoy the interactions and connections I made with some of the kids.
Teaching in the 21st century means having to expose students to a framework that was designed in the 20th century. We often struggle with telling our students what the real world applicable skill we are teaching them is, and this isn't necessarily our fault as educators. Some of the material we are teaching is completely outdated and in the eyes of our students, nonsensical.
Take for instance the book Catcher in the Rye. This is a book that has been required reading material for my English class the last two years. This book was originally supposed to be engaging and relatable for the students. This book is not only out of touch with the population of readers that are forced to digest it, the book becomes completely unrelatable to the average Stockton teenager that I am tasked with educating. For one, the hardships that the main character faces in the book become completely trivial compared to the massive challenges and hardships the majority of my students face on a day to day basis. This leaves my students feeling angry at reading something that they can not relate with. My purpose for the rant in the previous paragraph was to illustrate just how out of touch our current educational framework is. We are trying to fit these students into boxes that were made almost 40 years ago for a population that does not exist anymore. The one saving grace that we have as educators is our ability to find what I call "the meaningful." That is, how this can benefit the 21st century student in the real world. While I do still struggle with answering the question, "Why am I learning this?" I can now comfortably answer, at least in relation to Catcher in the Rye, "So that you may understand and empathize with the struggles of the previous generation." At the conclusion of chapter 1, the author asks, "What are your real goals of education?" After thinking humbly about this topic, I have decided on three core goals for my students longevity in academia, and in life. The first goal would be for my students to develop a love of learning. By exposing students to topics they are interested in, they will want to further their studies.
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