Motivation of students

How does a teacher motivate a student who does not care what you have to say or who does not want to be in the classroom? This is one thing that can be very hard for teachers and maybe very frusterating. A few things to try to motivate the student is to show them that they can be someone great and have a bright future if they just apply themselves. Tell them that they are the only one who limits the level of success that they attain. This may not always work.
The next question is how long do you spend on the student? This verys depending on the situation. I believe a teacher should never give up on a student but on the same hand not devote all their time on that unmotivated student. If a teacher spends all their time on a student who does not care and leaves the students who do care out to dry. A teacher needs to spend time with all students and sometimes even more with students who care but don't always understand the material at hand. As much as we would like to motivate every student to be successful we also need to realize that this will not happen. We need to do everything we can to try to make every student successful, but sometimes it is just simply out of our hands.

First Day As A Teacher

We talked last week in class what would do in our first day as a teaher. One thing that I will not do is hand out the syllabus in the first 2 seconds of class that day. The first thing I will do is something that engages everyone in the classroom were they may get to learn something about their classmates and me. My goal for the exercise is to get everyone involved and create a great environment. I will then go into something that deals with the subject that I am teaching to start some learning and awaken that students brains from summer vacation. Then finish off the first day with some classroom rules and expectations. On the second day is the time I will hand out the syllabus and start in on the material of the class. Now will what I envision of my first day of teaching and actually be change? Probably as a grow in knowledge. Will I have my first day be boring hand out the syllabus and that be it? No that will not happen in my class because I hated when teachers did that in classes that I have taken in the past. I want to make sure that I create an engaging and positive learning enironment from day one.

Adolescent Brain and Alcohol

I went to a Decorah Elementary school to hear Karen Williams give a presentation on the effects that alcohol has on the developing brain. The thing that I found most interesting is that drinking alcohol can have the same effect as a concussion. This makes me wonder how much could a high school or college student accomplish if they were to not drink or do drugs. Drinking in high has more negative effects on the brain when a person is in high school as to a person who is 40 years old. This is due to the brain develops at a high rate during the years of high school and college. Were as a person who is 40 could recover from a long night of drinking far more quickly because there is not as much brain developing.
Now as far as Karen presenting the material. I found her to be a great presenter and I did not get bored with her presentation. I think she did a great job of keeping the crowd involved, speaking as verious levels with her voice, and made great eye contact. For a teacher to not be boring and keep the students attention it is important to get the kids involved in the class, dont just look at there notes and make eye contact with the students, and don't speak in a monotoned voice. A monotoned voice or lack of getting the class involved in the learning process may lead to students falling asleep and using your class as nap time. So as a whole I believe that teachers should get the students involved, make eye contact, and change the level of their voice to highlight important points. I also believe that teachers should try to make students aware that alcohol can dramatically hurt their academic performance.

Classroom Management

Classroom management maybe one of the hardest things for new teachers or even well experienced teachers at that. The thing that I feel is important for teachers to establish at the beginning of the year is that the teacher is in charge of the classroom and the students are to be the receipants of knowledge that the teacher will give them. In most unorganized or rowdy classrooms it is due to lack of respect the students have for the teacher. The teacher may not have respect from the students due to the teacher not presenting the fact that they are in charge, that they give into students and allow them to do what they want. A teacher needs to get to the root of any problem as soon as they possibly can. This maybe by finding out who the leader or leaders in the class are. Once a teacher has figured out who they are the teacher should ask them to stay afterclass or find a time for them to come in and have a chat in private. The easiet or most efficent way is to critize in private and not in front of the class. If a teacher allows the student to know that they have gotten under the skin of the teacher it will feed that student and will lead to more problems. A teacher has to stay stong no matter what happens in front of the class to present a sense of power from the teacher. This maybe hard but is important in managing a class and creating an environment that is affective for students to learn in.

Greg Lonning Speaks at Focus

This past Sunday I went and saw Greg speak in Focus. He did a great job speaking and I believe he had an impact on the people that were there, atleast I know he did on me. He started by reading James 1:2-3 which talks about perserverance and considering it pure joy when we face struggles in our lives. Then he went on to talk about to times when he had to go through very tough struggles. The first was when he was a senior here at Luther and it was the night before his last dual meet before the conference tournament. That night his brother had died in an accident and as you can imagine that would be very hard for anybody. He went on to talk about how Paul Solberg told him that he should wrestle in the dual meet the next night. He wasn't sure if that possible but Paul talked him into it. Greg went out there and pinned his guy the next night. He then went onto win the national title. That would not have been possible had Paul not talked Greg into it. Then the second story was from his last year of coaching at UW Lacrosse. The story that he told was when on of his wrestlers had died from heat exahaustion from cutting weight. Greg said that he took full blame for this kid's death. That would be hard for anybody or coach. The thing that I got from his message that I can use for teaching or anything in life is that no matter what may happen in life you have perservere. In a classroom we may be presented with situitions that could be very difficult to deal with but we can not give up and must make the very best out of the situation. For if we were to make it through our teaching careers without facing some kind of struggle we would be lieing to ourselves. There will always be kids that try to make the class into some sort of circus and try to make other students their puppets. This is what a teacher can not have happen and must work to prevent this from happening. In otherwords we must have to perserve not matter what and overcome any obsticle we may face.

Dau's visit

Dau a teacher at a college in Vietnam came and spoke to us on a nice Monday night. I had the privilege of hearing him speak twice, once in ed psych and once in growth and motor development. Each time he spoke I learned something new and some differences between the United States and Vietnam. In Vietnam the family name is a persons first name and their own specific name is their last name. This is because people take pride in which family they come from. They are concerned with helping our their family before themselves. Sometimes here in the United States we are concerned with ourselves and sometimes forget were we come from. This is something that I found to be rather interesting in his presentations. However the thing that I found to be the most interesting was the fact that he started out being born to parents who worked in the rice fields in Vietnam, some of the lowest people in Vietnam. He went from that to working his way through secondary school and University to become a successful college profesor. This is interesting as we go out and become teachers we should do everything in our power to help students who come from families that have absolutely nothing and try to help them become something extraordinary. I'm not saying we should just help students who have nothing because we should help all students reach their full potential to become extraordinary people. Mrs. Gruwell did this when she taught at Wilson High School in the Los Angeles area. She took a group of the "drop outs" or "hopeless" kids and taught them how to love reading and reaching their dreams as students and as people. So it is my goal when I am a teacher to help every student try to find a way to reach their full potential and become extraordinary people.

Increasing Standards in Schools

How do we increase our nations intelligence in reading, math, and science to keep up with the rest of the world? What are the Finnish doing that we are not? These are questions that several educators are asking these days. We have fallen so far in math and reading. We now rank around 25th in math and 15th in reading. This is poor for the nation that we are. We are the land of hope, freedom, prosperity, and excellence. Or so we use to be. We have fallen from the top and allowed other countries to pass us on the academic world, business market, and so on. In business we have shipped many of our factories to over seas countries leaving many of our people jobless. On the education field we have allowed ourselves to stay on the same level and let the world pass us. We need to work to improve our schools. The teachers need to be able to prepare students for the 21st century world and not the 19th century world. We need to set standards higher at all levels from 1st grade through graduate students. Does this mean giving our hours and hours of homework? No I do not believe so. I believe homework should be short sweet and to the point. I think we need to find ways to make reading fun for kids to do so that way they will read instead of play video games for 8 hours a day. Video games are fine as long as they are kept in moderation. I believe if we make reading fun for kids and they start to do it more it will only help increase reading scores allowing them to have active full functioning brains. This will also help with the math scores due to the students having active brains that are ready to be filled with knowledge just like a car is ready to be filled with gas and a person is ready to be filled with food.

Chalk

I feel that Chalk was a rather interesting movie. It showed a teacher who had no clue on how to teach but was willing to learn. That was the history teacher. Another one that had lots of emotion and was really into teaching. This was the gym teacher who was really bouncy. Then there was another history teacher who was in it just for himself and not as much for the students. All he wanted to do was win teacher of the year. Then there was a first year assistant principle who was a teacher and decided to go from behind the desk of a class room and on to administration. She found out that being an assistant principle took up a lot more time the she had anticipated. This movie showed different types of teachers there are out there. The ones that are the most successful are the ones that love their job, willing to improve, have strong knowledge of the subject they are teaching, and show up with a positive attitude. Now this movie did show the extremes of each kind of teacher, but I believe it did a reasonable job at showing the life of a teacher and whats its like to be a teacher. My goal is to be the teacher that is able to relate to all my students at least to a level in which no matter who walks into my classroom I will be able to teach them what I am teaching and do everything in my power to at least have a respect for subject matter that I am teaching.

Administration Panel

The guy who came in to talk about what it is like to see things from the administration side of things and how he got to where finished was rather interesting. He made a lot of points that I agreed with such as it is good to change things up a little bit and not do everything the same way and thats it good to continue to work to improve yourself as a teacher. One thing that stands out that I do not agree with is that he said it is not good to teach the same subject or same grade for more then five years. I believe a person can teach the same subject or same grade for many years and still be very successful as long as they continue to evaluate and work to improve themselves every single year that they teach. That they continue to look for new ways to teach a certain area and find what works and what does not work. If they continue to do this I believe a person if their heart desires can teach the same grade or subject for a long period of time and continue to have success.

Blog 2 Monday's Panel

I thought the panel did a great job describing what it is to be a teacher and some of the challenges they face with technology, dealing with kids, and everything they have to do day and day out. The only problem with the panel was the fact that all three of the teachers teach in smalltown Iowa were there is not a lot of diversity. I think it would be great to hear from a teacher who has taught in a school that has a lot of diversity with race and class. There are several students at Luther who will be interested or going to teach in a place that is far more diversified then North East Iowa. Those students will face issues that do not just deal with the subject that they are teaching, but also have to make sure that there are not problems being started in class. Im not saying that every big or inner city school has major problems, but as teachers we will have to know how to deal with kids that come from a variety of backgrounds. I know that not every teacher is made to go teach in the south side of Chicago, because someone coming from small town Iowa it would be very hard to relate to life in the ghettos of Chicago. But hopefully all teachers can be prepared to deal with a variety of students. And it would be real cool to hear from a teacher that has or does teach in a school with a bunch of diversity.

Paper Clips

Paperclips was interesting because it took a new approach to showing students what happened during WWII. It gave them a hands on approach to learning. The students ended up collecting over 25 million paper clips and managed to get a German Train Car to store the paper clips in. This whole experience helped the students learn more then if they just read it in a textbook and had a teacher lecture on WWII for a certain period of time. It also gave them goals and a sense of accomplishement for what they had done. This may give them confidence to do extraordinary things in the future in and out of the classroom. I believe they was a great thing that these students have done.
I believe that more teachers should try to do things such as this, but probably on a smaller scale as compared to gathering 25 million paper clips. I am confident that doing things that the students have a hands on experience doing helps enhance the learning experience. There are a variety of ways to do this and I think each teacher should do it in there own unique way.