The Lesson

One thing that this team teach lesson plan emphasized was the conflict that can arise when there are an excess of group members. This excess made it difficult to execute the lesson. One person ended up completely dominating the lesson while the rest remained hidden somewhere in the background. This proved to be difficult and frustrating. How does a person interject seamlessly into a single person dominated lesson in an effort to participate short of cutting them off? All in all things did not go well for our social studies group. The idea was too abstract, the numbers too numerouse, and the time too short to go through the workings of WWI into the lead up to WWII. I guess it is important to put more focus into the lesson plan that the happenings of the crack house down the street. Life is not perfect, and neither was this lesson.

Blog about Anything

I have my first meeting with Kruse tomorrow and I'm not sure how it will go, nor what to expect. Kruse was quite mysterious and vague about the whole ordeal. I would like to say that I am behind this reasoning 100 percent, but that is just not the case. I like to have freedom of creativity, and am a fan of the abstract, but some structure is always welcomed as it has a habit of easing anxiety. Preparation is proved difficult with limited direction of what to expect and what to know. I like to be able to measure where I am at and not live in a state of perpetual anxiety that I am completely off course. In the spirit of optimism tomorrow will be the tell tale and hopefully great clarify-er. All I can do is lie in wait assuming that this will all be cleared up tomorrow.

How do the standards fit together

The standards fit together by creating a manageable classroom environment in which the ultimate goal of getting students to be active, critical, thinkers can be fully realized. 

Some of my goals for my students

- to show respect for each other and each others' ideas
- to understand others' point of views
- to be better problem solvers
- to engage themselves in discussion and learning
- to create good study habits
- to gain and understanding of where they stand on issues

Challenges with a class featuring different content areas and how they relate to my philosophy of teaching.

Some of the challenges of a class such as this, is that the teacher must relate the material in a way that takes into account the varying backgrounds of the students. This is really true for any class though and is not exclusive to Edu. 132. The real key is making sure that all the students are engaged and get out of the class what the instructor wants them to. I think the idea is to either find commonalities amongst students or speak in generalities that could be easily comprehensible by varying degrees of students.

What, if anything, will keep you lecturing.....

The only thing that could cause me to lecture is a lapse in creativity. This lapse would be created by a lack of preparation. As long as I have prepared for class ahead of time there should be no reason to resort to lecturing in an effort to fill up time.

Initial Reactions to Class and 3 questions about the syllabus

It is hard to say what my reactions are to the class since we haven't really gotten into it yet. I have a feeling that there is going to be a decent amount of work involved, but most things worth while involve a good deal of work. Hopefully this class will be as enlightening as it was sold, but time will be the determiner.

3 Questions About the Syllabus:

1. My first question is about grading. How can we be assured that personal biases will not effect our overall grade?

2. Is there a practicum involved with this class or do we just teach one lesson? If there is a practicum how many hours is it?

3. If we can do poorly on assignments and still receive a high grade by demonstrating understanding of the standards, then how do those assignments factor into our final grades and what is the incentive to do well on them? (besides personal gain and enjoyment)