Big Ideas Udb Ch 4

Chapter 4 explores how we understand 'understanding' and how that relates to developing pedagogy. Developing an understanding, which at times can be understood by viewing the opposite, is not a simple task. How does one understand the essence of something and what framework are you using to achieve that "understanding." Explanation, Interpretation, Application, Perspective, Self-Knowledge, were the five major concepts discussed in this chapter. Historical explanation, and the fiery disagreements that exists over interpretation, illuminates the difficulty is supplying a generic system for explanation. It is stated that "[our] intellectual blind spots" and being conscious of such can "predispose us toward intellectual rationalization." Understanding ones own limitation, and having that intellectual maturity is key so we have "the ability to unending assimilate experience to beliefs and to categories that seem not merely plausible ideas but objective truths." (p101) All too often we find students not having the necessary tools and engage a different culture or concept with implanted ideas that do not corelate and the reproduction of misconceptions take place.

Ubd Templete

I have chosen the 2-page template. It contains a concise system, organized well, but contains enough room to plan out lessons that deal with economics. To visually see the planned out work, with the key concepts, goals, and other categories, I think it will serve very useful. The one page piece was too small and the 6-page design I felt would have swallowed me under. There needs to be something that allows me to navigate the course, with access to the overall theme and goals. Also, the split between "identify desired results" on one hand, and "determine acceptable evidence" on the other, leads to healthy dialectical relationship between execution and results.

Ubd Chapter 3

This chapter allowed to conceptually tie toegther the important parts of the chapters before, working backward and understanding learning. The statement "It has to have pedagogical power" stood out to me. The quote continues, "It must enable the learner to make sense of what has come before; and, most notably, be helpful in making new, unfamiliar ideas seem more familiar." (P70) Very often "education" can degenerate into a collection of facts, with a theoritical, or a historical undertstanding. With that, to be sensitive towards eliminating and being aware of very common misconeptions. The dominant stereotypes and superficial thinking always enters the classroom and often can be justified through "academics." The section, "Framing goals in terms of transfer tasks" was also very useful in conceptually undertstanding what are the core task- the "most important performance demands in any field (P78). An educator needs to figure out what are such core tasks, and core concepts, and develop a method based in systems that have such "pedagogical power."

Ubd Chapter 2

The chapter Understanding Understanding was very useful. To understand the complexity of understanding, we can see that "the idea of understanding is surely distinct from the idea of knowing something." That said, how can we really understand that someone understands something. Later in the chapter, the idea that one can produce a pattern of responses and results because the actual subject matter has been internalized. But this process is very much based on the concept of 'transfer.' Transferring information is key. The actual transfer is "affected by the degree to which people learn with understanding rather than merely memorize sets of facts." The process of transferring information is connected to the quality and or the essence of the information. Which brings back the importance of the evidence of understanding. And the role of the assessments has to be to contextualize and demonstrate such evidence.

Ubd Chapter 1

'Backward design' seems to be an absolutely important concept. Not knowing where you are going, will not achieve the desired destination. Knowing what should be created before hand, paves a very clear theoretical understanding of what should be done to achieve that destination. This is critical of achieving such goals in the classroom, making sure that the key concepts are thoroughly addressed, and having a system of assessments in place. But to have such a solid system of assessments and goals, entails having a framework already defined. As the goals are defined, so is the process which eliminates any ambiguity during the march towards the end of the marking period. It makes sense that this process is explained as, "we can think of our designs, then, as software."

· Question: What did you have question(s) about from this reading? What made you curious as you were reading? What would you ask the author, given the chance to talk to him/her?

Deborah Meier's The Power of Their Ideas was an incredibly rich read. How Deborah dealt with the trials, challenges, complexities of urban inner-city education was fascinating. She attempted not to romanticize the experience, but demonstrate concretely how she built a successful elementary school, then fallowed by a set of schools. The millions of power struggles, the teachers relationship with the parents, the role of the state, and the role of the administration underneath that, illuminates how teaching is a challenge that is so multi-task. I would ask, what type of structural systems were actually built. What were the norms, the laws, the systems of expectations and how were they implemented?

What quote(s) did you find particularly illuminating, frustrating, confusing, inspirational, etc.? Be sure to explain why this quote was memorable to you.· What did this book make you think of?

The book did not expose me to singular quotes that stuck out. But I did appreciate the first sentence of Chapter 8 that reads, "[teaching] more than virtually any activity...depends on quick instinctive habits and behavior." One cannot use formal theory as complete medium for teaching. As well the accumulation of experience in the classroom develops skills that cannot be bred through other forms. Young people, still at a key developmental stage, cannot control their spontaneous behavior. There has to be structures in place that they respect and recognize, but their natural behavior can challenge such systems unconsciously. As a response, teachers must have a counter to this, which is very much embedded in instincts in the classroom.

What connections can you/did you make with other readings? with your own personal experience? Do you have an overall opinion on this reading?

I worked at Alternative Learning Community In East Oakland. The school was out of control all the time with an administration that was very incompotent and negligent. The attitude of the staff is that this just how things are. I new with a more creative approach, with more teacher led activity, and real systems in place, that the school could thrive. It was very frusterating. How could one work hard in such a situation, and not feel like it was a wasted effort. But how could one not work hard, where the children were going to pay. Reading about Deborah's experience gives me a hope, but methodical based hope, that actual systems and structures can develop in inner city school that supply real education.

Mastery

· Question: What did you have question(s) about from this reading? What made you curious as you were reading? What would you ask the author, given the chance to talk to him/her?

The authors conception of Mastery was very thought out and borrowed concepts from many different traditions and philosophies. But the author placed his perspective in the cultural context of American society, where everything is fast paced. What I would ask the author is how did his conception of Mastery evolve. The explanation of Mastery in this book seems like a crystallized understanding that was based on years of evolving thought on the matter. Both a structure and elasticity was woven into the concepts. What books, and real life experiences played instrumental in developing his understanding of Mastery?

· Quote: What quote(s) did you find particularly illuminating, frustrating, confusing, inspirational, etc.? Be sure to explain why this quote was memorable to you.

·Albert Einstein wrote, "that the modern methods of instruction have not yet strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry...It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and sense of duty." (P 122) This was very interesting to me, besides the fact that Einstein's social quotes are often insightful, but because modern American education was shaped to reflect economic needs, and contemporary California education is based so much on the CSTs. As such systems define the rules and dynamics of education, when teachers are forced to adapt to the demands of testing, the actual social relations in the classroom, as well as the form and content of the academics, establishes its self with a coercive relationship to the student. But such coercion negates the potential, even though the systems that are propped up in coercive terms are justified to foster such potential.

Comment: What did this book make you think of? What connections can you/did you make with other readings? with your own personal experience? Do you have an overall opinion on this reading?

The book understanding of Mastery had influences that were both philosophically western and eastern. Based in the challenges of American fast paced culture that negates long term development, this book attempts to explain how and why one should achieve a state of mastery. Its influences, indirectly speaking, have many Chinese, and eastern principals. The maintaince and tapping into personal energy was something built in eastern philosophy way before their western counterpart. And the centrality of goals, and habitizing activity for perfection I think is very western, but Leonard was lacking the rigidity that these concepts had in say the 1950s. The discipline of the outer, with tapping into energy of the inner, establishes an equilibrium. But the progress is never constant and regression is always around the corner. I found the book to be a little abstract at times, but it definitely deepened my understanding in what it means to master something.

Daily Classroom Practices

The checklist that Reach has made is vert specific and categorized with five major components. My list was far too general. The specific needs of well established classroom was submerged in the generalities built in the points of my list. The useful component of Reach's list is the first "Focus on Classroom Environment." Developing daily schedules, Classroom expectations, daily objectives, daily routines and so on. Since I have never been a teacher before, and understanding that these components are necessary, learning the art of their applications will ensure the creation of a more academic environment. The list could be more specific in the quality of the curriculum; how well did it apply and explain its core points and so on.

Daily Classroom Practices

James Stronge argues that some central factors must always be present in the classroom. Being timely, focusing on time as an issue as well as being enthusiastic about the subject matter makes mountains of difference. As well classroom organization negates problems before they arise, or better put, problems arise out of the lack of organization. Norms, rules and expectations must be built into the classroom life. The "must haves" of a classroom would be;

Having the whole time period well organized. One activity might exhaust itself quickly. Students who might have missed class before might need alternative assignments.

Expectation of classwork getting done then and there and being able to challenge excuses.

Expectation of punctuality, not just the beginning of class, but in shifting from one activity to another.

Expectation of expectations, so power struggles are minimized and norms play a hegemonic role in the classroom.

Expectation of daily writing, daily silence, daily reflections and daily reading.



Clarity of expectations, so student do not get so easily lost.

Daily Classroom practices

-Write in journal

-Collective reading and silent reading

- Do Now for Introduction of class

- Introduction of concepts and discussions of concepts.

- Community oriented time period where non-academic issues can be discussed.

- Rules for Clean up

-Rules for Eating and Drinking

- Reflections based writing

-Conceptual writing

Tate- Classroom rituals

The daily rules of a classroom cannot change. Their permanency parallels structure.
For my classroom I would have;

----Daily activities;

Have three different time-spaces, a discussion space with collective activity and collective discussion, an individual time period when one hand is raised, and a test taking space when students are focused on a test without talking.

-Do now (write a response to a quote, song, clip, or newspaper article).

-Raise hand to speak.

-Ask for complete silence when the class is getting to noisy.

-Be prepared to answer a question of some sort with a thought out answer.

-Read everyday

TPE Summary

One cannot belittle the importance of each issue and category that each writer attempted to address. Neuroscience, language, culture, classroom management, thinking about thinking, relationship building, academic assessments, are all categories of a much larger system that is known as teaching. Quality teaching contains with it a healthy equilibrium where these systems are all interwoven into a singular system of delivering quality education. Teachers who are skilled in certain areas, like relationship building but lack in other areas, like classroom management, negate their own strengths due to those strengths not being able to have the impact it could. Other teachers who have developed a balance, and conscious systems that bring together these different issues, can have much deeper and long lasting impact. For me, reading about the neuroscience was very interesting. The actual science of the dynamics of the classroom illuminates how the "laws" of the craft of teaching actually do exist. The mastery of the art of teaching takes into consideration such "laws" in the overall pedagogy.

TPE F

Richard DuFour's article, "What is a "Professional Learning Community"? explores collective systems teachers can use to raise the quality of the education offered in the classroom and build lasting effective communities that produce quality education. This model of collectivity, offers advocating mutual support systems, spaces of criticisms, and mediums for growth. Teachers often are thrown into their classroom with little support. How do teachers reach such ambitious goals in isolation? The starting point for such professional communities is how one judges "their effectiveness on the basis of results" and "[every] teacher team participates in an ongoing process." With such goals attained, the "team goals shifts" according to Dufour. Such perspective seems sound, but in real situations, schools are getting gutted through a downward spiral of reduced funding. Such teams will have difficult decisions to make based on the limits of aggregate labor output. Being conscious of such limitations, and dealing with the objective work load, what specific work should be prioritized? And as school budgets decline, objective workloads increase, and having time and energy in fostering professional collective development becomes a task that becomes very uphill.

TPE E

The Key to Classroom Managment by Robert Marzano and Jana Marzano begun by discussing the most obvious and the most essential, that is the centrality of relationships and relationship building with the students. Without relationships, there always will be an intuition of distrust and the naked power struggles of student verse teacher come out in the classroom. With classromm managment, they argue "teacher-student relationships is the keystone for all other aspects of classroom management." With those relationships being a base, the article discusses many different types of students, that cause particular affects, and have particular needs. With a combination of the humanness of relationships, coupled with the methodical skill of classroom control, and with concrete goal setting, the importance of the academics can safely enter the classroom space.

TPE D

Ana Maria Villegas and Tamara Lucas introduce some important concepts in their article The Culturally Responsive Teacher. The growth of ethnic/racial students, being 41% in 2003, as well as one if five students speaks a non-English language at home, eliminates the Anglo-Saxon centered conception of contemporary education. The authors introduce the concept of teaching in a "constructivist view of learning" that entails figuring out how to create bridges between differences cultural and or linguistic background students often have in the classroom.

The perspective "sociocultural consciousness," the authors have different focuses. Such a perspective contains both relativist postmodern like tendencies, where a "person's worldview is not universal but is profoundly influenced by life experiences" coupled with a socio-political perspective where education can make "powerful connections between social and education inequities." Diversity centered pedagogy walks through a park of systems. Advocating for different cultural groups to have their own mutually exclusive representation, as well as not ignoring historical and structural systems that have reproduced inequalities and experiences of subjugation.

TPE C ELL

Deborah Short and Jana Echevarria's article Teacher Skills to Support English Learners I found to be quite schematic and superificial. As someone whose first language was Spanish, and have struggled for years to develop my English, the pedagogical points are obvious or over formalized. The third paragraph is titled "Not All the Same" and goes into how English learners, just like citizens, are not all the same and have different learning abilities. Wow how usefull!

The article continues with the Sheltered Instruction Observation Model Protocol (SIOP) that was part of a seven year research project. The conclusion researchers had of the SIOP model was it "performed significantly better on an academic writing assessment" than did other educators' models. But when one digs under the surface, learning English from a disadvantages position contains hurdles that are very difficult. The emotional, personal, psychological, and social factors come into play, which are mentioned, but dealt with superificially. The actual experience, and the medium of education, the nature of social relations in the classroom, of the ESL student is one qualitativly different than a student who is a citizen.

TPE C

Judy Willis' article The Neuroscience of Joyful Education I found quite fascinating. The deep frustrations youth have in a classroom, and their reactions to the environment of education has a scientific and neuro explanation. What stood out was the point that "students retain what they learn when the learning is associated with strong positive emotion." Simultaneously, negative emotions hinders the learning process. How can academics also create a positive and enriching experience to reinforce those very same academics? Such question leads to the point about abstraction in the classroom. Willis states, "[when] stress in the classroom is getting high, it is often because a lesson is overly abstract or seems irrelevant to students." Demonstrating that the accessibility of the academics can be understood as well as is delivered in a medium that fosters a positive experience, then that actual academic concepts stand far more firm than otherwise, and the level of education goes up. That being the case, immediate relevancy is something that can be offered. Academics is also based on understanding abstract concepts. Take math, philosophy and economics as examples. But nevertheless, to find a position where students can absorb such information in a positive way, will put them in more of medium to absorb more difficult and abstract concepts.

TPE B

Learning to Love Assessment. How does one relate assessments with classroom management and classroom structure? Tomlinson stated, "my sense of the wisdom of using assessment to accentuate student positives rather than negatives" is an important concept. Do we negate the negative or affirm the positive? Or how can their be balance between these opposites? Not that a teacher doesn't want to challenge the weakness students may have, but how do the strengths grow to begin to alter the balance so the dimensions of weakness are challenged from within as apposed to without. So as the teacher reaffirms the positive, through consistent assessments, it becomes a non-orthodox form of challenging the negative.
Tomlinson said, "The best teaching is never so much about me as about us" stuck out as something of importance. Understanding the classroom as a unified body, and attempting to advance the totality of the classroom is key to community based learning, as apposed to teaching in a framework of broken down individual pieces.

TPA part 2

Thinking about thinking, a trait that makes humans different than animals, and demonstrates the phenomenal potential of the mind, is a concept that all young people can engage with. Thinking about what framework one uses in dealing with a question, is the first step in really questioning the question methodologically speaking. And the development of "internal mental dialogue" by using countering frameworks, forces the mind to synthesis antithetical frameworks which qualitatively advances ones analytical skills.

TPE A

Arthur L. Costa stated, "skillful thinking must be cultivated." With that said, how do we define "skill"? Nobody suggest their thinking is unskilled, and everyone thinks their thoughts are correct and thus skilled.

TPE response

Out of the introductory TPEs, I would state that TPE 4, making content accessible, the most important one. Why? The development of knowledge has been developed in an incredibly uneven way. Where less than 1% of the world population has graduate from college and the rest have been left behind. So for educators to develop pedagogy that can brake down the systems of centralized accumulated knowledge into socially accessible forms is both an important skill and a neccessary practice.

First Post

This is my first post. Im excited about teaching for the first time.