Being a student has really become a way of life now - although I will never quite be the same as my student peers, the non- traditional perspective is certainly different!! But doing homework, gossiping about professors, wearing sweatpants in social settings ( thank goodness I lost weight), yup, that's me!
But am I learning? Heck yes! Not always from my professors, mind you, but often from connections that I make from experiences to the lecture or discussion at hand - and wouldn't you know it? That is probably the single biggest learning curve about teaching.....teaching is all about building on experiences.....& when the experiences aren't there to connect to, creating the experience!
In my middle level psych class I learned why the Queen's School was so good, and what could change in New Hartford to help the kids I volunteer with. In Emergent Literacy, I am seeing and learning just how important read-alouds are, and what building blocks are missing for the kids whose parents didn't read to them, in Curriculum I've learned how to connect my experiences together to 'sell' my background, and am now working on an inter-disciplinary lesson plan that connects my literacy workshop knowledge from last year.
Yup, worksheets & memorizing don't give you long term knowledge, but connections do.....is this really news?!?!
Check out this great article, and make your own connections! http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2012/10/response_taking_advantage_of_our_neural_networks_in_the_classroom.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
