As our concept groups were figured out and divided between the class, I stuck with age vs experience. As a group we were a little confused at first as to where we were going to go with this. We finally came to the conclusion of focuses on children with ACES and how resiliency can help cope with those. Humboldt county has very high numbers of children who are neglected, which makes this project very important. The age vs experience is relevant to this in the way that these experiences affect these children in a way that they may need to mature more quickly than others at that age. Age is really just a number but it does not dictate how one may act.
Mindfulness
Once in a Lullaby
School of the Future
Authentic Education
Authentic is defined as true, real, unforged, verified, and trustworthy. Focusing on experiential learning, organizing units of study around themes, and personalized learning with individual curiosities and goals. I think educators tend start at like this in preschool. In preschool it is all about the children discovering and honoring a child’s history and a child’s potential but that tends to fade as they get older. Why? I think standard education is an easy way to teacher, just follow the guidelines. As a teacher I would like to give an authentic education that allows the children to learn everything they need to but through different ways that embrace all types of learners.
Thoughts on Standardized Education
Standardized Education recently has been getting a lot of heat in the way it chooses to educate everyone the same way. I think one thing that is solidly against standardized education is the way that everyone is supposed to learn the same way when we know not everyone does. I do think it is not all bad, there are times in education that an evaluation test does need to be done to see what level the student is at. It can cause a lot of students anxiety and cause them to receive low scores. It also promotes this assembly line approach that I do not agree with. It does however set goals for students and teacher to reach.
Multiple Intelligences
In today’s class we received a multiple intelligences handout. It included a number of intelligences with contexts that each include. After reading each one I believe I am Logical-Mathematical Intelligence, Interpersonal Intelligence, Visual- Spatial Intelligence, and Bodily- Kinesthetic Intelligence. It was really eye opening to see a connection with the way I think and something that had all of those processes written on paper. It also showed me how I do not think. I think as I get older I try to achieve all of these intelligences to complete and have multiple intelligences. Isn’t that what everyone is trying to achieve? One I believe that I have been working on for a while is Intrapersonal Intelligence because I am very bad at expressing my emotions and coming to a conclusion about how I feel about something. I have gotten a lot better at this since I have matured and told myself it is okay to show some emotion. It was just not a way I grew up so it was hard to reverse it. As for musical intelligence I am not sure I have mastered it but I have always found an outlet with music and been able to follow rythm, sounds, and patterns. I really liked this rubric of intelligences to compare and contrast myself to.
Brain Booth Reflection
Visiting the Brain Booth was very interesting to me. All of the activities were there to sort of relax you in a concentrated way. The most interesting one was the machine you hooked up to your ear and it turned green once you were relaxed. I think there could be a lot of benefits of incorporating these activities in my day or a children’s day. For a child it can give them a chance to relax, express themselves, and concentrate on one activity that they are trying to accomplish. The machine that I found most interesting can help a teacher gage which child may be under more stress and has a hard time relaxing. I think it can also help children reset their minds and refresh. Doing the same thing everyday in school, thinking about everything you need to do after, and counting the minutes until school is over can build up a lot of stress. The Brain Booth can be there to help children relax and reboot in the middle of the day.
The theory group presentation may be relevant to teaching children in the way that it welcomes children’s experiences and how they construct their knowledge and meaning from that. It is important to have children apply their school life and home life to the outside world. This allows children infinite opportunities to discover the world around them. Children love to share their experiences and this experience allows them to use those experiences to learn. Every child is going to look at the world differently and the constructivist theory allows for them to construct their own knowledge. The children become active learners and learn through doing activities and reflecting on them. A teacher can be there to help point out that doing this certain action led to this certain response. Scaffolding is another big role a teacher has in the classroom for this theory. The experiences with the child and the world, the teacher and the world, and the child and the teacher is what makes up this theory.
What does it mean to be mindful?
Being mindful is really important when working with children. Being mindful in a classroom helps a teacher observe and notice things better. To be mindful in my life right now would also be beneficial to my overall wellbeing. I think it can be easy to live in the past or worry about the future a lot, but its is good every now and then to forget all of that for a couple minutes and notice what is going in the world around you at that very moment.
I think children are already better at us at being mindful frequently. They are very good at living in the moment and experiencing and discovering everything around them constantly. It is a good experience for a teacher to learn from the students in this way. Practicing this can lead to less depression and anxiety, which is important for both adults and children. It helps the brain kind of have a reset for the day and start over with a present observation of what is happening around them.
I think it could be very beneficial to use inside my future classroom. It can help the children’s brains relax and practice focus. Like I said before, it is a good reset for the teacher and the children to reset their minds and refocus into what we are proceeding with afterwards. It is a good strategy for any period of life to practice. Personally, I react quickly in anger to a lot things and regret it soon after. Practicing mindfulness after a stressful event can help me think about what just happened in a clear head space and more responsibility.
Social Cognitive Theory
Social cognitive theory can be implemented in all classrooms. It’s a way of learning through observing socially. The teacher can be implemented into this by modeling what behavior they expect of of children or point out another child who is modeling the desired behavior. What the child learns is all based on them. They can either choose to learn through observing others or decide that doesn’t really interest them.
In our presentation we showed a dance video where we all learned socially the steps to the same dance. That is an example of social cognitive theory that many did not realize they are learning socially through that. The hula hoop activity showed the theory more obviously. All of us were looking at our neighbors to see what action they did to get through the hula hoop. We got to choose what action we would learn to use for when it was our turn. We also learned what we chose not use through what we observed that did not work.
Everybody learns differently and for some this theory matches the framework of how they obtain knowledge. This theory can be very useful to all types of learners because it practices some key aspects that are required for all learning. Motivation to learn is as prominent as attention. If someone is not paying attention how can they learn from what is supposed to being observed. Motivation is key because everyone still needs a reason to learn. The motivation behind the hula hoop would be that someone would have observed someone that did not get through the hula hoop through the first time. The motivation behind that would be to learn what not to do what that person just did because they did not want to mess up too.
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