“Alright, does this make you feel any better?” The sun just began peeking out from the depths of the clouds. A slight mist covered the bright green grass blades in our neighborhood park. Tiny birds flew high above the ground, chirping to one another. I let out a deep sigh of relief and replied, “This is better, Mama.” It was round three of being behind the wheel; the first two times I came to dub as an “epic fail.” During my first time behind the wheel, I became so nervous that I mistook the gas pedal for the brake pedal. I’m sure many know how that story goes, yet thankfully I was in an empty parking lot; we luckily just startled a stray cat. With my second attempt, after hours of repetitive driving, parking, and turn signal switching, I had my basic driving skills down pat. Round three was here, and I wanted a challenge. There I was, preparing to drive off of the black parking lot pavement and straight onto the main, mean streets. We woke up extra early that Sunday morning, in order to avoid any intense traffic.
There my mom was in the passenger seat. She was going on about telling me the ancient stories of when she first learned how to drive. As she recollected memories from the depths of her mind, she rambled about how she used to have no sense of direction. “I couldn’t tell you 4th street from 5th avenue,” she chuckled to herself. Then she recalled the memory that she didn’t even know what “yield” or “merge” meant, although she was a foreigner. As Mama resurfaced memories from the depths of her mind, the only thing that was surfacing from me was sweat.
My eyes were wide open, pasted strictly on what was going on in front of me. Peering out of the windshield, my eyes darted from the Sedan on my right, to the Camry on my left, ...
... middle of paper ...
...without the slightest sense of anxiety.
The streets started humming with the sounds of traffic, as more cars began to file onto the stretch of the road. “You’re doing great,” Mama reassured me. After about an hour more on the road, scraping the pavement, we were both ready to head home. “You know Mama, you gave me an amazing lesson today,” I said with great appreciation to my mom. “You weren’t bad at driving to start with,” she began, yet I knew she did not understand what lesson I was referring to. I realized that day that sometimes, different modes of learning and teaching are much more efficient than others in a certain situation. Although one way of teaching may not seem like it makes any sense, or even if you don’t realize it happening like I did, you have to have a little bit of trust in the teacher. I glimpsed back at my mother, and simply stated, “thank you.”
There was always times where I just wanted to throw in the towel and call it quits. However, I just knew that my persistence would eventually kick in! Also, I had to accept the fact I would not do so well at first. When I first drove a car, my nerves throughout my body were completely shocked through the roof. It was because I did not know how to do it since I had no previous driving experience. For some people, they like to drive four-wheelers or dirt bikes before driving a car, so they have some experience, but I am not that type of person at all and never will be. So, me and my dad went down to Buckeye Career Center one afternoon for me to practice driving for the very first time in my life. At first, he would go through the course to show me where I would go. The course included turning both left and right,parking into a space, reversing, and many more things. My dad would always say the same things to me: “Turn the wheel, Coast, Brake Earlier.” These are just some of things he stressed to me. Turning the wheel was a problem I had early on because I would always do the wrong technique. I would always turn for part of the way but not all the way. The next thing he would say to me would be is just coast. To be honest, I did not know that a car could do such a thing. Coasting to me seems like taking a little break from driving. Also, I did not know how far you could go when coasting a car. A big thing I learned from my
Schwarz is vocalized by Sugar after the children have examined the store closely, noted the exorbitant price tags and pieced together how money is involved in their lives. Consequently, Bambara has shown that they could not come to this realization without Miss Moore, “haling two cabs, like it was nothing” and bringing the children see with their own eyes, things they could not imagine (Bambara). In the article “Teaching Children to Think” Joel Westheimer is passionate about education, and enhancing student’s critical thinking skills. He delivers a personal narrative that recounts his experience struggling to teach thinking skills to an especially rough student in his class that is very similar to Sylvia. He taught middle school in New York City and vividly recalls the challenge of working with students who are hard pressed to cooperate with his teaching agenda and have a limited view of the world around them. He wizens to their schemes to outwit him, and he even comes up with one of his own that creates profound thoughts in the minds of his students. Westheimer’s experience with the reluctant student, Archeem, showed him how to create a learning environment that is engaging to those kinds of kids. While trying to turn students into thinkers, he realizes students will learn more when the lesson is not just presented for the memorization of facts. Westheimer’s insight is students may not develop the
The Teacher’s Pyramid of Influence is a pyramid of three sections. The top section is Overt Attempts to Teach, the middle section is Interacting with Students, and the foundation of the pyramid is Modeling. Just about everything in life is built from a foundation, the beginning of something that is built upon to make something bigger and better. The foundation of a teacher teaching their students is called modeling. Modeling means to give an example, not just say anything, but do or show something. Modeling can be a positive thing or a negative thing. When a teacher talks about the importances of a particular action like looking both ways before crossing the street, the best way to help students understand is to model this action. Each
‘If a child does not learn the way you teach then teach him the way he learns’ (Chinn & Ashcraft, 1999)
The small legs that whisked back and forth in the open space of the vehicle were full of energy. The young girl spent the day with the two people she admired the most. A bigger version of herself sat in the passenger seat with her husband driving next to her. They laughed over conversation. Every so often, the girl would stick thin fingers against her mother’s shoulder to receive her attention. She would say something trivial and obvious, but her mother would still entertain her. She absorbed every phrase her daughter said as if each filled her with a tremendous joy and was the greatest thing ever spoken. Her mother had selected a black dress for her today with a large white ribbon tied around her midsection. Her hair had been combed back in two braids so that the tips were touching her shoulder blades. They were coming home late from a Christmas party at church.
Today’s society appears to be constantly on the go. People seem to be pulled in multiple directions at once. Individuals never appear to have enough time to complete tasks that continually accumulate. It can be difficult to criticize someone that tries to make the most out every minute. Unfortunately, some of today’s drivers show a lack of judgment and trying to perform other tasks, while behind the wheel. People may feel this is best use time while getting to a destination. Occasionally, the small amount of time that people are trying to gain results in a time consuming accident. With modern conveniences that are geared toward an on the go public, individuals appear to be too preoccupied to driving safely.
I believe that learning is a journey that both child and educator set out on together. This journey is a privilege that I take seriously, realizing that a child’s early years are a key formative time in their life. I believe that it is during this time that important foundations are being set in place that will not only impact them in the present but will also influence them later on in life.
Exactly one month later, all of the fears that happened in the past were returning. Was I going to fail? Was I going to get the same, strict instructor? As I slide out of the car and slowly shut the door, I could only hope that the same person wouldn't be there when I attempted to take my driving test last time. With that thought running through my head, my brain was in overdrive. All the wheels were turning as fast as they possibly could.
It was a cold October afternoon in 1996, and I raced down the stairs and out the front door, in an attempt to avoid my mother's questions of where I was going, with whom, and when I'd be back. I saw my friend Kolin pull up in his rusted, broken-down gray van, and the side door opened as Mark jumped out and motioned for me to come. I was just about to get in when my mother called from the front doorway. She wanted to talk to me, but I didn't want to talk to her, so I hopped in pretending I hadn't heard her and told Kolin to drive off.
Through exploring multiple learning theories and reflecting on my own teaching beliefs, I have developed my own theory of learning. As I developed my theory, I wanted to consider what it takes to be a highly effective teacher. An effective teacher must have mastery of instructional strategies, classroom management, classroom curriculum design, and use assessments as feedback (Laureate Education, 2010a). By using a variety of instructional strategies, teacher’s can meet the learning styles of all the students in the classroom. Effective classroom management can lead to students feeling safe and more willing to take risks. When a student feels comfortable to take risk, then learning will increase and the students’ confidence will grow. Classroom management also creates order in the environment, which will allow effective learning to occur. By understanding curriculum, the teacher can target skills and causes learning to take place. Teachers need to deliberately plan lessons around standards and specific goals based on curriculum and the school’s mission (Marzano, 2010). Assessments need to be use to guide instruction and used as a “method for improvement and mastery,” (Marzano, 2010). While determining my own theory of learning, I believe that I need to consider what effective teachers demonstrate in the classroom.
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” ― William Arthur Ward
In today’s classroom, the teacher is no longer viewed as the sole custodian of knowledge. The role of a teacher has evolved into being amongst one of the sources of information allowing students to become active learners, whilst developing and widening their skills. Needless to say, learning has no borders – even for the teacher. One of the strongest beliefs which I cling to with regards to teaching is that, teaching never stops and a teacher must always possess the same eagerness as a student. Through several interactions with other teachers, I always strive for new ideas, techniques, teaching styles and strategies that I might add to my pedagogical knowledge. Furthermore, through personal reflection, feedback and evaluation...
Training future teachers is an important part in a good school system because it gives future teachers superior and inferior examples of how to teach. In college, teachers in training will only use textbooks to study. One problem with only learning how to teach through textbooks is teachers can’t see the process of teaching, they only read it. Cameras also benefit teachers because it shows them how they teach. Thomas Roberts an administrator at Hafen Elementary School in Nevada quotes what some teachers’ feedback is, “‘I didn’t know I leaned to the right when I speak. I didn’t know I focused more on the girls than the guys’” (Gray). By seeing and knowing what each teachers’ learning styles are, they can try to fix anything they don’t like. For instance, if a teacher realizes they lecture too long th...
It was February 10th, 2015 when I had come home from school and had my dad take me out for driving practice. It was the day before my driver’s test and I had my dad in the passenger’s seat. It was a chilly afternoon and I was so anxious that I was excessively shivering. As I accelerated to move into
In this course I experienced an important change in my beliefs about teaching; I came to understand that there are many different theories and methods that can be tailored to suit the teacher and the needs of the student. The readings, especially those from Lyons, G., Ford, M., & Arthur-Kelly, M. (2011), Groundwater-Smith, S., Ewing, R., & Le Cornu, R. (2007), and Whitton, D., Barker, K., Nosworthy, M., Sinclair, C., Nanlohy, P. (2010), have helped me to understand this in particular. In composing my essay about teaching methods and other themes, my learning was solidified, my knowledge deepened by my research and my writing skills honed.