Week 4

Week 4 was a very different week as compared to the past weeks. We were given 6 different workshops to complete instead of attending our tutorial along with having to attend the lecture. 

During the one of the workshops I got to thinking about the idea of 'stereotypes', our everyday life is full of them and if I'm completely honest I seem to go along with most of them instead of thinking about them on a deeper level and trying to go against the typical image. So if I, as an adult am so quick to give into these stereotypes then no wonder why its so common for the younger generation to be sucked into believing them. This thinking has provided me with motivation to ignore and/or rebel against these common misinterpretations and as a result I now intend to aim to eliminate this issue within school kids.  

Week 3

This week it was brought to my attention that I needed to begin to think about 'IMAGE', I need to think about how I would like my future students, parents and even colleagues to view me. We were asked to bring in an artifact that we believed represented our ideas about teaching, the first thing that sprung to mind was the ocean. Now this was not because I would like to spend my days lounging around the beach, but because whenever I am at the beach a sense of calm washes over me and in the future I wish to be a calming figure that my students like to be around.

Not only do you have to think about the image of yourself as a teacher you need to think about how the image of your classroom is going to look and the type of environment that surrounds it. I feel as though these two ideas of image are very important to think about as every teacher is different and you can decide how you would like to be interpreted, in my mind I believe that is one of the many reasons why I decided I wanted to be a teacher this is due to being able to have freedom and to a degree being able to portray your knowledge in a way that you believe is most suitable.

Week 2

This week, there were two concepts that stood out to me. 

The first one being that to teach, you don't need a recipe. You could have a classroom of 20 kids but they all individually learn differently and you will need to adjust your techniques to suit each child. But how do you make your session that flexible? In future classes I am interested to find out how to be a flexible teacher and also be able to ensure that the children I am teaching flourish to their full potential as I as the teacher am accommodating all of their individual needs. 

Secondly, over the past lessons and in particular this weeks, the saying that is relentlessly drilled into us that "there is no right or wrong answer" but ultimately doesn't there have to be a right answer and a wrong answer? 

If you ask any person that has been to school, old or young, they will be sure to tell you that all of their schooling experience was resolved around tests that they either passes or failed. So therefore there must be wrong answer because year in year out students are marked by if they answer the right question or the wrong one. 

Week 1

During my first week of completing this unit I was caught completely off guard, this is due to all of the concepts that had been discussed, prior to the this week I didn't even think about them or relate them them to teaching. The ideas about thinking about the land and its history has really made me realize that I need to expand my thinking in order to become the best teacher I can be. Do kids really understand or appreciate history? That is the question that has been on my mind since completing the first week of this unit. As my studies progress I hope to be able to fully understand how to engage children to be connect to the idea of place-thought.