Chapter 3 was a fun read for me because it covered such an interesting topic with self-concept. Self-concept is a crazy thing that I am not sure anyone masters throughout their lives because we always are such harsh critics on ourselves and it shines through in our adolescent phase where it is such a life changing time with a lot of influences on such young lives. This time in a students life is so crazy it is just amazing to see how I made it through it and came out as someone who is completely different then the person before and how that experience happens to everyone you know and will teach. The idea that someone has to go through so much stress/change/peer pressure and many other things while trying to find out who they are just sounds so crazy on paper that it's amazing its such a common thing.
Chapter 4 Reflection:
Chapter 4 was basically a summary of a class I took last semester called Psychology of the Exceptional Learner which covered students with disabilities as well as the acts and laws in place to protect and help them learn which is a great thing to see in today's day and age and I also got to work with a teacher that was amazing and really cared for her kids and saw the potential in them to do just as hard work as their peers.
Anita's Podcast:
Anita's Podcast covers a lesson Dr. Hollibush was very thorough in teaching me in the fact that culture is a huge aspect of teaching especially when you start teaching in a new area with very different cultures then you are used it to and it's very important to learn cultures fast to be respectful of your students and their families. One good way to achieve this would be to talk to your fellow teachers to ask if they know of any students with particular needs to their culture and work off that or to otherwise always make sure to talk to your students and be open with them.
Chapter 5 Create:
My collage is about how big social media has come to be part of every students life. Students always have a phone in their possession to tap into these many outlets of information and knowledge and there really isn't a filter there for them. Another aspect of my collage is how media has defined certain social standards in life such as the fact that people should want to have these skinny bodies and wear revealing and clothing that may be uncomfortable for them. This is even furthered in our celebrity society because you never see them dressed down or any of them overweight. The picture in the top left corner is to show how media has glorified sexual experiences and it gives young impressionable students the idea that being sexually active at young ages is expected and the norm. Finally at the bottom left the picture of the gun is to signify how much media today puts emphasis on crimes and goes very in detail about them without any filter on all the various news outlets. Some people even claim that media tends to glorify certain perpetrators giving a reason for people to redo these heinous acts to achieve the sort of notoriety the people before them achieved. All of this could effect my classroom because all of these things are further stressors on impressionable youth I will be teaching and can definitely define certain standards on a social level.
Evaluate:
While looking up videos about violence in schools I made sure to filter from videos of the past year to see what was relevent recently, then I further divided my search by one news site (Pix11.com), one user moderated site (Youtube.com), and one general search site (Google.com). These came up with very interesting results in the fact that the top 15 results from Youtube were all black violence related while Pix11 were mainly about general school violence in New York. Finally Google seemed to combine the two but that mainly might be due to the fact Google will prefer Youtube videos since they own the company.
The first link I reviewed was the top Youtube result was a video with just cuts from black violence in school and was very heavily racist which started out with "Black schools are a hot mess of chaos and violence" which just lead me to dismiss the video as it obviously had other agendas, especially furthered by the uploader promoting his book, Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry: The hoax of black victimization".
The second link was the top result from Pix11 and talked about New York City's public school system and the fight between a company called Excellent Schools and the New York government where the company Excellent Schools was claiming there was a 23% increase in school violence and the governor claimed that violence was on an all time low. This was interesting because no one had the information on the site to back it up and both sides of the argument would have reason to lie as Excellent Schools is a charity group that has been a common enemy of the New York school system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqJxRs0W5BU
For my third video I picked a Youtube link that seemed a little more productive then the first two and it is basically an eight minute collage of pictures and narrates types of violence in school and then the second half contains things students and people of a community can do to help. It was an alright video covering very basic ideas and topics but good over all in the sense it gave a very broad spectrum of school violence.
Relate:
My school classroom will be a science class, probably biology or chemistry, in a high school that has all types of students including the ones who struggle with school to the excellent as well as the students who love science to the ones who couldn't care less. I intend on being the teacher that unites all the different types of students in my class in an environment of comfort and excitement. I want my classroom to consist of a stress free and hands on environment because I truly believe that is the best way for people to learn. I intend on creating an air of comfort between teacher and student that involves the understanding that I still am the instructor but that doesn't mean I won't be reasonable and open to change my lessons or to focus more on what my students are interested in, in the science field that isn't off topic. I want to be more of a guiding hand in learning then the person who can repeat the text book.
TED Talks on Brain Disorders and Dyslexia:
These two videos were very interesting. I really enjoyed the TED talk on brain disorders in the fact that the man spent a lot of time talking about facts of previous illnesses that we barely even recognize anymore because of how far along we have come in understanding and treating them. Then when he switched tracks to the brain disorders we are better understanding everyday now, it all clicked that maybe this is something we can see as a "thing of the past" like all of these old diseases that we have overcome. Mental illness is a very prevalent thing that we have had hard times breaking the code of, but we are cracking that code faster every day which is an amazing outlook on the future and gives me great hope. I truly loved this video and it kind of opened my eyes to that even being a possibility.
The dyslexia video is a great video for anyone who doesn't fully understand the disease. The speaker is a great talker, the videos animation is very entertaining and informative and it is a great quick look at dyslexia and how big of a disease it really is and how broad that "spectrum" you always hear about can be. It was a fun quick watch that really broke down a difficult to explain concept which is great.
