Some Thoughts on Teaching and Learning

So, what seems like a lifetime ago – although it was only two weeks ago – I got the opportunity to take part in a TEDx conference at Western. A friend of mine from high school is at Western, and was one of the organizers of the whole thing. It was a really inspiring day. There were many great speakers, all completely different… but I was so happy to attend, especially since many of the talks were extremely relevant to a young teacher. The theme was “Own Your Passion” which I loved . I think that statement sums up what I have been trying to accomplish this year. I am extremely passionate about teaching, but this year has been about me gaining honing my skills and gaining confidence, so now I can “own it”. Now, onto the super cool talks which directly relate to teaching – how awesome is that? There are two that stand out for me… completely different things… one is super inspiring and awesome, and one is just downright useful. The first was actually a TED talk that is online and we just...

I've decided to keep it simple and answer the questions: Why do you still want to be a teacher? (or, if you don't, what's changed your mind?) I've wanted to be a teacher for at least 8 years now, and although I had absolutely no clue what I was getting into when I started thinking this, for some reason, I am continuously in love with it. The things I love most are: - the kids that I teach (every group is interesting and different... and a challenge) - that I am continuously learning from my students about my subject, and more - seeing the moment when the penny drops - being part of a learning community -- teachers helping each other, students helping each other, teachers helping students - finding new ways to explain things -- improving myself How have your practicum experiences changed your ideas about WHY you want to teach? I don't think that they have, for the most part. If anything, my experience in my practica have just deepened my ideas of why I ...

I  have been thinking about assessment lately, especially student feedback. I am interested in finding ways for students to use feedback on tests and quizzes to improve (I’m actually doing my action research on this). Well, I had a conversation on Friday with some of my peers, and professors, which provided a few ideas on how to do this. There were a few that I particularly liked, and I’m writing them down now, so that hopefully I’ll remember them and try them. 1. Getting students to give their own feedback on quizzes. Give the answers on the blackboard, and get students to pair up and explain the answers to one another. 2. Letting students re-write unit tests. The tests would obviously not be identical, and would give students a chance to show what they’ve learned. I’m not sure what the weighting would be on the second test. Maybe it would be beneficial to figure this out with the class. Also, an idea that was mentioned was to make it so that the students would have to get a 75 ...

I was just looking through the Growing Success document for an assignment in one of my classes, and it struck me just how arbitrary our grading system is. I don't really understand why we convert from "acheivement levels" to percentages (why not just one or the other), and why these acheivement levels aren't evenly distributed. There was a grid in the book which showed all of the conversions using a 1-, 1, 1+, -2, 2, 2+ etc. system converted to a percentage system. But the system is skewed such that for instance, a level 4- spans from an 80-86... 7 percentage points, but a level 3+ spans from 77-79... only 3 percentage points. I remember this difference in my school experience... it didn't make sense to me that an "A" spanned from 80-100%, but a "B" was only from 70-79%. It's like the people setting up the system decided that every ten percent from 50 percent onwards would be a different letter grade. And then when they got to 80 percent...