Spring+Semester+(+Cameron's)

=Spring Semester (2)=

DISC report.

__Final Wiki Post:__ My micro-teaching on Margret Thatcher.

Reflecting and considering my micro-teaching on Margret Thatcher, I found it an interesting topic to go deeper into and learn more about. I found her to be a very interesting and empowering women. The one constant thought that kept coming up in my head was what type of class would I teach this lesson in. I can see this being in a more college level class that would have a greater focus. After straying off topic now I will focus more on my teaching in itself. My plus would be the use of technology and using Google Documents. I find this to be a good resource that could be used more by teachers in the ability to cut down on the use of paper and this also allows for students that are not in class to work from home if they are able. I also believe that I had a good teacher voice and presences. I thought that when I began I grab the class and the were focused on me.

My delta for myself would be why I wanted to have students work in groups and in this particular way? I was trying to stay away from direct lecture because in the micro teaching it was an opportunity to be creative and try things we could see ourselves using in the future. Another Delta for myself is why did I break up with group work this way ? I didn't really know why I did this because i look at an array of different ways to break up group work. I look at different policy and her works while in government and I believed they did not an equal work load with some being extremely long reads that did not make sense when broken down or parts taken out. My question for myself is what other ways would I teach Thatcher, would i just incorporate into cold war section or English governmental history.

Looking at my micro I have few minuses that I believe could be addressed. The first that comes to mind is when thinking about the closing questions, I didn't let the class dig deeper and process the questions I was trying to close with. I let a side comment blind side me where I lost the class and just ended up ending the lesson. I could of powered through our even ask the student why she felt that way and see if I could have her dig deeper for questions. I also believe that i need to maybe deeper processing question on some of the worksheets. I found myself for some groups just fact finding while other groups i had them elaborating on specific points and voicing their opinions. Finally I believe with my hook i could of done better on it and i found that i jumped into my lesson a bit fast and could of spent a little more time on the hook.

Week 14- Teaching the Terrible

 * How will you handle 'Teaching the Terrible'** **(In your placement/practice/curriculum)?**

Teaching the terrible is interesting concept that every teacher will address in different way and there truly isn't a specific best way to teach it. I also believe that teaching the terrible differs in every situations that you teach. The first aspect I believe to be a key factor is the students maturity level and just their age in general. I have been in a classroom last year where a teacher was trying to teacher 9/11 and the impact it had on some many people not only in America but the rest of the world. This was a 6th grade class and many of these kids don't recall this event taking place. Many students were dozing off, looking around the round or trying to talk to friends. The teacher of the classroom stop the movie several times and attempted to explain the significance of this. Students did not fall silents and focus on the video when they showed clips of people jumping from the Towers and were hitting the ground. The students finally had focused on the video and began to take in the magnitude of what really did happen.

As stating early the students actions, i believe the distracting factors for students contribute to what effects them. Students now are in world were news and information is at their fingertips where they hear stories off death and pain constantly. This along with different avenues of entertainment from video games, movies and television almost numbs the students. This is an important idea I believe as a teacher I must make sure to keep in mind. This is where you have to try to find ways to successful awaken their senses but also must be careful when doing this because this is where you could face kids that don't understand the the terrible you are trying to teacher. They might relate it to a video game that they play on a daily basis. This is where as a teacher you must get material that creates a new idea in these students heads.

Looking back on the example of 9/11, I found myself in a position were i had very strong feelings. This is where i went up to my placement teacher and began telling him my particular feelings and my particular circumstance for these feelings. He felt that to make his next hour understand I should tell my story at the end of the class. After sharing about family members and friends that were apart of 9/11, the class had question about how did the make me feel knowing people that were apart of 9/11 and how they really didn't know anyone that has been effected by it. This is just one example but i believe certain situations you can express your view and feelings more than others. This also goes back to the maturity level of your students and many other circumstance that pertain to what you can and can not express.

The last point i would like to make is avoiding issues and what negative outcomes that can create. I believe a major issues with this would be any teaching of the civil rights movement or anything to with the slavery and the Holocaust. These are just a few examples I believe teacher should make points of emphasis on. This lack of now showing your students what has occurred in our past could lead to assumption that you as a teacher truly don't care and look over these points in human history. This could also have students make deeper assumptions that could lead them to believing toy have certain beliefs.

Post due on 4/8/12 (8 p.m.)

A- Emotional- After listening to the panel speak about their experiences and their journey to where they are today as teachers, has created a unique array of emotions for myself. Listening to the teachers question their purpose as teachers and if they truly believed in being a teacher. This issue brought about that brought comfort to me and knowing that these professionals have question their selves and if they believed in themselves being teachers. The other accept that brought comfort to me was the communication between parents and the teachers. Hearing the panel talk about way to connect with the parents early and create a clear way of communication is important. The excitement I gained was through the explanation of being able to work with the kids on personal levels. I believe this is why I am attempting to enter the field of teaching to work with the students and be able to create unique learning experiences for my students. I believe everything else we talked about with the teacher was reassuring my assumptions i have already had for the teaching experiences.

B - Professional - There were many aspects that stood out professional but the one major aspect was when began to talk about putting in time at the school. The panel started to talk about how they should up between and hour and and hour half earlier then they were suppose to be at the school. I believe this is important because as the panel said this show the comment you as a teacher have not only to your students but also your other co workers. They also talked about working on a relationship with your fellow co workers. The way the panel emphasized the importance of being know to your fellow workers as part of the team especially when you are a new part faculty (placement year and first years on the job). I understand this is really important in any job but it's also nice to reemphasize this importance.

D - More Please - ¿ Preguntas? I wanted to know the most difficulty situations they have been as a teacher when dealing with students and / co workers? What was the most rewarding event as a teacher and a coach? How do you find the medium with being a teacher and being there for students? What was the biggest assumption you had going into teaching that blew up in your face? Tips - What is the most useful tip when dealing with ELL students? Also when dealing with a student that has given up or just doesn't care what do you do? who would you go to for help? As a social studies teacher what is the most useful resource you have found and used?

F- Future Casting - Looking into the future with creating my teacher identity i found it very interesting that they said it was a performance everyday but also to be myself. That has been a major conflict i have been battling because i believe that i must create something i am not and change who i am as an individual i am not sufficient enough to be a teacher. This was comforting to hear that i can be myself and that i should just mold who i as person and create a teacher out of that. I also believe i am a people person and listen to these teachers brought comfort to me and aloud for me to believe in myself because for some time i lack the confidence when looking This was a very gratifying experiences to hear issues new and old from this panel.

Post due on3/30 A. What is the difference between cultural relativism and ethical relativism? Give an example of each.

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- Cultural Relativism is understanding an individuals particular beliefs when looking at what culture they are from. (An example of this would be looking at the concept of Manifest Destiny. The American Government and Settlers pushed native groups of their lands in order to fulfill their goal.) Ethical relativism is when someone on their own depicts what they believe to be right and wrong by using their own founding principles. (Some parents believe it is good to be tough on your kids while other parents believe it not be and this has nothing to do with culture and all up to yourself..)=====

B. In a pluralistic society such as ours, why or why not is ethical relativism a desirable way to think about ethical issues?

- I believe in a pluralistic society like ours I believe ethical relativism seems to be a desirable way to think but only in theory would it work. I believe this to be true because if everyone one acted out on their own specific principles society would be a much more deranged then it already is. This type of society then would not be able to have laws and rules because it would be on the merit of people to have worthy principles. I believe to have a functioning society you must have cultural relativism because these allow for people to understand what is perceived to be right and wrong. 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? - I believe for the most part people have set forth proper principles and beliefs that allow for them to teach the terrible ( I am looking at this through a teaching perspective and not what is occurring in the student's household). Teachers or the teachers i have been around my life i believe they have a good moral balance and have been able to handle teaching the terrible. An ethical relativism could take students away from creating their own beliefs about a particular event. I believe this can be shown in our class many of us have strong opinions and we must be able as teachers to deliver to the students the importance of these events and the facts too.

__WIKI POST:__

// We’ve been talking about assessing students, but what about teacher assessment? Our assignment this week is our “Ideal ‘SIRS’ form’ – pretend for a moment that you are one of your future students. You are to write an assessment, like the open-ended 'SIRS' form format you fill out about your instructors, from the perspective of one of your (observant, articulate, and mature) students being asked assessing you, his or her teacher. What would you hope for this fictional student to say about you on your SIRS form? // - I would first off like to state that I really enjoyed Mr. Alvarez Class. Mr. Alvarez made it quite enjoyable. He made sure that he treated all of the students fairly and tried his best to make class fun and interesting. One of my favorite aspects of his class how he was always willing to hear our point of view or stories we believed related to a certain lesson we were learning. Mr. Alvarez always enjoyed hearing our stores but he also had plenty of his own. His stories were always interesting to hear and he must have lived a pretty awesome life.

Mr. Alvarez always used an array of different lessons to teach us the material. He always had an interesting resources to use. We never constantly were in the book but I felt like i was learning the needed material. One of my favorite parts was that he always kept mixing up the class from a different way he taught to even the formation of our room. He tested our knowledge in many different ways which allowed students who are not great test takers show the knowledge they had had learn over any given unit. Mr. Alvarez had had some of the coolest assignments for us today and allowed us to show our creative side. He was always willing to help us with work we didn't understand. Even with his busy schedule with coaching he was also willing to work his students into his schedule.

Honestly we i first entered his class i was really nervous because he seemed like a really serious guy. He made us sit in particular seats and seemed really stern and up tight. The first couple of lessons he made sure we understood the point of handing work in on time and picking the room up after ourselves. He also made the point us always having the supplies we need for the class. At first it seemed like he was uptight but as the year went on it came such a routine that it was never a big deal to me. He also seemed to loosen up and made class worthwhile. I hope I have in one of his other Social Studies classes or I was even thinking about taking Spanish because he teaches Spanish 1 and 2. I would recommend to take Mr. Alvarez class.

=Post #4 (2/26) = a) Highlight 2 specific teaching strategies/techniques that were used to teach content Jigsaw was used multiple times. In the Jigsaw we learned about significant people that were apart of the lesson. Also he used debate, he split the class up into specific groups before we were watch the video that we were using to gain information. We as a class then debated about the impact of the conflict from the different view points we were assigned. b) What do you think was effective about the teaching methods and activities? I believe his use of multiple avenues to show us information. I also found it very effective just learning from a completely different point of view. It was very informing to ask questions at the end of the lesson. The video we were able to watch was also a different approach all in itself. This video was the lecturing of a different teacher but also had students believe they were watching a video. c) What adaptations could have been made if this lesson is taught to different groups of students (college students, middle school students, etc)? - There are many adaptations that can be made when teaching this to a group of students. I believe the first aspect would just be the length and detail a teach would go into for a specific group of students. I believe this lesson alone could be a course for college students and go through the many different topics and aspects. Middle School students i find you could talk to them about this but they will have little content knowledge about this lesson. This lack of content i find it would be harder to go into deeper understanding of this conflict. Middle School students this lesson alone would most likely be a day lesson within a larger section.

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- In their article, //Responding to Globalization?//, authors Kasai and Merryfield explain that, “the goal of global education is to prepare students to be effective and responsible citizens in a global society (p. 355).” =====

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a) What do the authors have in mind for education to be responsive to prepare students for a globalized world? ===== b) What do you find especially helpful or troubling about the claims being made? The authors have in mind a specific way to prepare students for a globalized world. The authors believe in looking at the world or even specific situations through a different perspective other then your own, like looking through a different set of lens other then ones you typically would look at. This way of looking at the world allows for them to move to the concepts of thinking globally and also being able to understand that the world is full of many diverse people. They mention how students should read multiple types of documents from different levels of sources when looking at events and situations taking place in the world.

B. I find these claims to be helpful because as our society grows we will come in more contact with different cultures and societies across the world. This ability to think globally and look at the world in a different perspective can only be beneficial. This way of preparing students will help prepare them for the changing world. I believe kids must create their own beliefs and virtues but by widening their eyes to all the different beliefs in the world we could help further their development as a person and citizen of the world. BAM!

Post #2
I believe what our group and others groups have came up with was to have every single group member research a candidate. This is a great use of Cooperative Learning being used because it is holding everyone accountable to find information about their specific candidate. I believe to use this in my classroom I would have more specific outlines on what students need to research and find. I believe this is important because students are helping there group members learn about a specific candidate. I would have basic guidelines such as the candidates names, previous government positions, their state, political party and also maybe specific view points the candidate feels strongly about. I believe these types of guidelines would be most effective for students. My final point is that with this type of lesson i find Cooperative Learning to be a great way to teach this particular lesson.

Week 1
__**//1.How specifically does the text establish the significance of Media? //**__ Both these text help to establish the growing importance of media in the classroom. Also these text help to show why and how teachers can effectively implement Media. They also state how the United State compared to other countries is just starting off with implementing media in class rooms. Overall the message is that media is extremely significant and with the speed in which a person can gather information through different media outlets across the world allows for people to stay current with events occurring around the world. Also with the advancement of technology were are able to access and abundance of different resources through an array of different media types. //**__2. Develop an idea to share of a lesson you would like to teach that uses/presents a film (of any genre) to explain (a) a time period; (b) a cultural/social/political point; (c) a biography; or (d) an idea or concept. __**// I believe i would show the movie kingdom of heaven.Staring Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson. I would use this movie to help explain the crusades. Though i know this is a movie created for entirtainment It does have some historical significance with important people and places. I would also be able to show the idea of the crusades through a Christian point of view that isn't completely showing the Muslims as devilish people but people that are fighting for a sacred land.