Synthesis
I’ve had various instructor experiences. Experiences as small as tutoring students to being a recitation leader to being a teacher’s assistant to teaching my own class. The trainings that prepared me for each of these positions scratched the surface. The workshops I’ve attended so far for the CoAT (Certificate of Accomplishment in Teaching) program have supplied me with more tools to handling different aspects of teaching. Even the Intro to Teaching Workshop has provided me with new methods to try. The three workshops I attended are FIT: Managing Disruptive Behavior (Online from October 24 2013 to October 27 2013 provided as a recording by Brian Van Brunt, Ed.D., Western Kentucky University), FIT: Learning Styles (Online from November 7 2013 to November 11 2013 provided by the CoAT Director Dr. Barbi Honeycutt), and FIT: Effective Questioning Strategies (Online from November 14 2013 to November 18 2013 provided by the CoAT Director Dr. Barbi Honeycutt). These workshops have equipped me with the ability to handle a disruptive student, to expand my lessons to all student learning types, and to effectively question students without harming their education. Furthermore, these separate issues can be combined into a more important theme, which is to understand the student’s perspective.
Although I have never faced the problem of disruptive student situations, I want to be prepared. I attended the FIT: Managing Disruptive Behavior workshop solely for the purpose of being equipped to handle a situation in which I am dealing with a student with disruptive behaviors. Dr. Brian Brunt presented a view point I was not anticipating. He said that, as educators, it is our job to put ourselves in the shoes of the student. We must understand where the student is coming from. We are provided some methods of approach: Rogers’ “Core Concepts”, Steven Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Motivational Interviewing, and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. I knew that we must do this in general for all students. However, when it comes to disruptive behavior, I never thought of taking this attitude as well. To me, a student who acts disruptive does so with the intention of ruining class for other students and does not deserve the same empathy. I’ve learned that these students should not go unpunished, but I’ve also learned that not all disruptive behavior interrupts class or distracts other students. It can affect the students themselves as individuals, and this type deserves understanding and assistance. I now know that I must approach a student with harmful behavior with an openness and understanding as to why they may be struggling with class.
One of these struggles could involve their individual learning style. To avoid this issue as best as possible and to learn how to tend to students’ learning styles, I attended the FIT: Learning Styles workshop. In this workshop, we first learned about our own learning style. I found that my learning style leaned toward reflective, sensing, visual, and sequential (the different learning types are active and reflective; sensing and intuitive; sequential and global; visual and auditory) . It was pointed out that lessons we prepare correspond to our own learning styles. Upon further investigation, I learned that my lessons are, in fact, made for students with similar learning styles. While this is beneficial for those students, the students with a learning style different than my own may suffer. It is important to direct the lessons to all types of learning styles, then students will digest information rather than absently pay attention.
One way to determine whether the students are absorbing lessons is to effectively question the students. To learn what effective questioning looked like, I attended FIT: Effective Questioning Strategies. During this workshop, we learned about different types of questions, both good and bad. Some bad question types are dead-end questions, chameleon questions, question-with-programmed-answer questions, the put-down question, and the fuzzy question. These questions types prevent deep thinking or intimidate a student or confuse the student. The education of a student should not be hindered. These types of questions do not teach the students, nor do they allow us as educators to determine the status of comprehension within the class. We want to ask questions that force the students to analyze, evaluate, and apply what they have learned; We want the students’ answers to be factual, or close enough to the correct answer (also called convergent), or, at the very least, a direct application of previously learned material (also called divergent). With proper affirmation from the instructor, students will know whether they are on the correct path to understanding. If the students understand what is going on in class, they are less likely to have a negative experience in the classroom.
Obviously, each workshop supports another; what I’ve learned in one workshop can be used in the next workshop, and what I’ve learned in the second workshop can be used in the third, and again for the third and first. These workshops are teaching us how to challenge what we believe is best for the students, and to put ourselves in the student’s position and think whether what we are doing is really best for these students. As a student, I made note of certain lesson characteristics that I would never do, because I didn’t learn best that way. I never made note of attributes that did work. Nor did I make note of attributes that worked for other students with a different learning style. Also, because I am not an auditory learner, I did not pay attention to what effective questions sound like. In addition, because I never considered a disruptive student to be anything other than an inconvenience, I never looked at that person's actions from their own position. I have completely changed my approach to all of these topics. I am now constantly thinking of different approaches to tend to different learning styles, and how I can support this with questioning strategies, and how I can help students understand material so that they won’t feel the need to be disruptive to themselves or to others.
I am slightly skeptical that what I’ve learned may work for students in the Mathematics discipline. Mathematics is the embodiment of contemplation and critical thinking. However, many students believe that it is simply memorizing a formula or process of steps in order to solve a problem. While this is true for a basic understanding, there is thinking on a deeper level. This lesson is more difficult to get across in the allotted time slot. Students may not learn this lesson, because it is more subtle. The strategies used to manage disruptive students or to teach to different learning styles or to effectively question are strategies that are quite useful on a day to day basis, where the learning outcome is listed for that particular lesson. Although I have this skepticism, I have not tried my new tools in the classroom yet. The subtle lesson may not be so subtle with these new strategies, where it may have been difficult without them. I believe that the effective questioning strategies may be quite useful, especially when it comes to questions that force students to analyze and evaluate lessons they’ve learned, i.e. contemplation and critical thinking.
Although I have never developed a concrete teaching philosophy before the CoAT program, I’ve always believed that no student should be left behind if it is within the instructor’s power to prevent it. Now, I’ve learned many different approaches that prevent more students (than before) from getting lost during class.
Application
I have created a specific lesson plan (below). While each of the three workshops promote each other, I use the FIT: Learning Styles and FIT: Effective Questioning Strategies workshops as motivation. As I stated above, I feel that it is important to not leave a student behind, if it is in the instructor’s power to do so. A lesson plan is a way to layout what the lesson will entail. It is a guide and map for organizing materials for the purpose of helping students achieve the intended learning outcomes. A good lesson plan contains a set of important elements that are descriptive of the process. Here, activities for a specified learning style can be planned out. Also, questions can be prepared ahead of time with a specific objective in mind. In the Learning Styles and Effective Questioning workshops, we similarly created activities for each learning type dependent on a lesson and questions from different tiers dependent on a lesson, respectively. However, I will combine these in order to both teach to all students as well as enforce their thought processes. I hope this lesson plan will successfully maximize the number of students who have learned the lesson, which is part of my teaching philosophy.
Lesson Plan
Date: January 1, 2014 Class Number: MA 231 Class Name: Calc II for Life Sciences Time: 33:50 Length: 50 min
Topic and Context: The Newton’s Method
Aims: To maximize the cover of the following learning styles active and reflective; sensing and intuitive; sequential and global; visual and auditory. To assess students’ understanding of the lesson.
Learning Objective: Students should... be able to understand the graphical interpretation of Newton’s Method and be able to apply Newton’s Method to approximate roots of a polynomial.
Materials: A skeletal outline of the notes.
Prior Knowledge: recently Taylor Polynomials; not so recently max and min of functions, partial derivatives
Warm-Up: Have the students pair up, and work on the following problems. Only allow 10 minutes.
1. Let f(x) = 3x^3 + 2x^2 + 1. Find all values of x such that f(x) = 0. (Bloom’s Taxonomy Remembering )
2. Recall Taylor Polynomials. First find the Taylor polynomial of second degree for f(x) = x^3. Then find the roots of the Taylor polynomial. (Bloom’s Taxonomy Remembering )
Body I: Explain the Newton’s Method using a graph of a function in the xyplane.
Assessment Opportunity I: Ask the following questions
1. Give a list, in your own words, of the steps we used to find the roots of this function. (Bloom’s Taxonomy Understanding)
2. Now using mathematical jargon, rewrite this list. (Bloom’s Taxonomy Understanding )
Body II: Leaving the graphical representation up, derive the iterative method for Newton’s algorithm.
Assessment Opportunity II: Ask the following questions
1. What does it mean iterative method? ( Bloom’s Taxonomy Understanding )
2. Using the graph, describe the motivation for Newton’s Method in your own words. (Bloom’s Taxonomy Understanding )
Reinforcement:
1. Apply Newton’s Method to problems 1 and 2 in the Warm-Up. Compare your new answers with what you obtained at the beginning of class (write this comparison out). (Bloom’s Taxonomy Applying and Analyzing )
2. Do the even problems in the book from #2 ( Bloom’s Taxonomy Applying )
3. Think about how this may be related to the previous lesson on Taylor Polynomials. (Bloom’s Taxonomy Evaluating )
4. Homework do WebAssign for this section.