TE-408+Reflections

**April 29th, 2012**   For my micro-teaching, I taught the French Revolution. It was to say the least, a sincere learning experience. I will start with the pluses. First, I will give myself a plus for creativity and enthusiasm. Running into the classroom waving a french flag to La Marseilles takes courage and is definitely an attention grabber. My overall idea as presenting it from the viewpoint of a French Revolutionary was sound and is a useful tool to comparing to how it actually went down.  That is where my deltas come in. While presenting as a French Revolutionary was rewarding, it didn't go far enough. The students had trouble trying to figure out who I was presenting from. I didn't have good transitions between my French Character and myself as a teacher. For next time I sincerely need to differentiate between the two and keep them separate. Again with a delta, the idea of literally letting them eat cake was good, but I didn't take into account any student with dietary restrictions and I need to do that next time so that I can make sure everyone gets a treat and not just part of the class.  Now for the negative. I was ill-prepared on timing. the lesson was supposed to take up to 25 minutes, it took around 10. I realized that I had screwed up the timing during the teaching and became nervous, forgetting words, and ideas. It made the lesson quite a bit worse than it would have been otherwise. The timing issue was terrible and truly needs work by me for this lesso nand any lesson. I can not go into a classroom and leave the students with extra time because I screwed up the timing. I also need to be able to improvise when I do mess up, or else I am doing a disservice to the students.  That is my evaluation of my lesson, some good, quite a few deltas, and a big negative for timing issues.   **March 26th, 2012**  ** A. What is the difference between cultural relativism and ethical relativism? Give an example of each. **  Cultural relativism is relating to various cultures and knowing what their ideas, functions, and traditions are. For example, a teacher in an Arabic heavy school district could demonstrate cultural relativism by reading up on the cultures of his students. Ethical relativism involves believing that nothing is inherently right or wrong. An example would be showing how the United States while standing against an oppressive dictator durign the Cold War, put several oppressive dictators in power to stop the spread of Communism.

** B. In a pluralistic society such as ours, why or why not is ethical relativism a desirable way to think about ethical issues? ** Ethical relativism can be beneficial in teaching multiple viewpoints to an i   ssue, such as the bombing of Dresden. However there are several inherent problems with ethical relativism in society. First, there are certain evils that must always be viewed as evil. Among them the Holocaust, teachers, and society can not allow future generations to run around believing that the Holocaust was good or neutral. It must be viewed as evil to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. Second, there is a terrible outcome to thinking along the lines of "The Greater Good". While the outcome may be beneficial, the ends can never justify the means. Thirdly, there is a severe problem when we as a society try to compare evils. By asserting things such as "Look how evil the United States is" in comparison to Nazi Germany, we not only skip over the wrongs that the US and Nazi Germany have created, we dishonor the victims of tragedy by using their deaths for our own means. There are many problems with moral relativism.

** C. Specifically thinking about “teaching the terrible” in social studies classrooms, how might ethical relativism prevent (or enable, if you can make the argument) a meaningful analysis of events such as the war crimes of the Nazi regime? ** As I stated above, when we try to compare evils with outcomes we pass down a dangerous road. We can not always take the good from bad. The Nazi atrocities is one such occurrence. We can attempt to make light of good when over 11 million people were murdered for such a good. Trying to compare those atrocities with others is insulting to the victims and allows society to view evil as normalcy, a fear I hope I will never see as long as I live. Objective relativism can not be used in analyzing the crimes of Nazi Germany, they must always be seen as the pure evil they were.   **February 27th, 2012**  <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> **SIRS for Mr. Rivard:** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> Mr. Rivard is an excellent teacher. He makes learning fun with his roleplaying and flare for the dramatic. I never have trouble keeping interested in Mr. Rivard's class. It can be quite entertaining to come in one day and suddenly be a lawyer in a case to learn about how the court system works.

Where Mr. Rivard excels at making learning fun, he can at times be too easy or too abstract in his teaching. While roleplaying is entertaining and can be very informative, perhaps sometimes it would be nice to have a concrete lesson with key terms. Sometime tests can be difficult without having key terms written out for us.

Apart from that though, Mr. Rivard really is great. He cares about his students and he cares about teaching. Even though it would be nice to have more direct instruction, I can forgive Mr. Rivard because he truly does love his job and is just very excited about teaching. Overall, Mr. Rivard is a great teacher. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">**February 15th, 2012**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">In //Responding to Globalization,// Kusai and Merryfield propose that teachers begin to focus their pedagogy towards a global mindset showcasing the inter-connectivity between World events and cultures.

I am largely in favor of this idea of teaching. Showing how cultures and world regions interconnect can lead students to deeper understandings of the current political problems and lead to resolutions of future problems. In essence, this globalized method of teaching is not too different from the existence of the United Nations, or the European Union in that having different cultures interact and respond to each other can prevent small conflicts from scaling out of control as happened in 1914 and 1939. Teaching from a globalized perspective encourages the understanding necessary to keep the world a peaceful place in the minds of our future leaders.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">**Week 3**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The best accountability activity that can be used for this is a jigsaw activity. The person I picked was current president Barack Hussein Obama II. If each student from each group were to come together with a different piece of the story of the presidential candidacy, then one giant picture can be created. If a student had failed to research it will become apparent to the other group members as the jigsaw is undertaken.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">**Week 2** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">1. According to the the text, media is highly important because it is ever present in the lives of students. In the course of the last couple elections, social media played a large role in in how people viewed the elections and how votes were determined. Media should be utilized to better teach students and instruct them how to navigate through such a treasure trove on information as the web presents.

2. For this I will upload a previous lesson plan I came up with. Songs, as a form of media, can serve as a written record of the times. In a way this can be used by students and teachers as a good introductory to the lesson. In the case of the lesson plan, music is used in the introductory to the course, however specific songs can be used in specific lessons. Specifically, Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young can be used to explain the significance of the Kent State Shootings in 1970.

TE407.Rivard.IndividualLessonPlan.docx