406 Reflection on Promising Practices

406 Reflection on Promising Practices

 

            After attending the conference I realized many different things about education.  One of things that I will take away from this conference is the need to know your students so that you will be able teach them, so that you can change your way of teaching in order to reach the students.  Each class is different, each students is different and as a teacher you have to be able to adapt.
            The conference showed me that in order to teach in today’s classrooms a teacher really needs to know the students on a level beyond just a list of names on an attendance sheet.  Getting to know their interests, their likes, and what makes up their lives.  This is one way I will change my classroom.  I will ask the students what their interests are, what they like outside of school.  I will ask this in each class for, as I said before, each class is different.  Dr. Emdin stated, for example, a rap circle might work in an inner city school in LA, but it would not work in a rural school in the Ozarks.  You need to know your students, your class and your community.  By really knowing this you can really begin to teach the students on a level that they can be interested.  It will keep them more focused on the lesson at hand because you are teaching in a way that is geared toward the outside interest of the students.  Bringing this type of teaching into the classroom, in my opinion, will show the students that you care about them beyond that letter grade in a grade book.  You are showing the student that you asked the about their interests and that you actually listened when you integrated their interests into a lesson that they probably thought would be boring and would have nothing to do with their real lives.
            One way to do this is to integrate technology into the classroom as much as possible.  In one of the breakout session we were shown how to something as simple as Google Maps and Google Earth can be used in a classroom for a history lesson.  Everyone uses Google Maps and Google Earth so why not bring that into the classroom.  Kids that have smartphones can actually use them in class or classroom PCs can be used as part of a lesson.  The outbreak session showed how a lesson on D-Day using Google Earth can really bring to light what a soldier, close to the students ages, were doing on that day.  We can relate the images to the students and to let them imagine what theses 18, 19 and 20 year old kids were facing.  I plan on using technology, which is everywhere today, in the class so it can help relate and make relevant a lesson that the students, at first, might think has nothing to do with them.
            Getting to know your students, your school and your community beyond the surface is

something that I plan on doing after attending this conference.  It just makes sense to know this

information and then beyond knowing it, integrating it into the classroom learning so that it is

something that can relate to your students.  If you make it relevant to their lives, they will be more

interested which, I believe, will lead to actually learning.