Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Week 19

Summary
          I have an eclectic stile of teaching. At any moment I can be dictating information a student has to know, or showing them where to find something online, or giving them a hands on activity to help them understand what they are doing. Sometimes I just interview the student to understand what they want out of their learning, before I start answering their questions. Many times I literally say "what would you like to learn?" and then find a way to help the student learn it. The difficulty is translating this stile to online learning and that is why I am in this class.

TL;DR(unless you have time)

                                                         How I developed an Eclectic stile
  • If I look straight at Pedagogy:  My stile is somewhere between constructivism and connectivism. My teaching stile mostly developed before I ever took any teaching classes and I would say it is eclectic in nature. 

  • My first experience with teaching was working at the children's museum in Los Angeles as a museum Volunteer running stations. My next experience was four years later working part time in a nursery parent preschool as a non parent assistant teacher. Three years later, I began teaching as a substitute teacher in My children's school district and simultaneously as an art docent. After learning about my  school district and being told my son was gifted as tested by the school, but had to be placed in the bottom reading group because he could not spell (Dyslexia). I pulled my kids out of school. I decided to home school eventually getting my Masters in education and starting my practice as an educational therapist.

  •  Children's Museum and other child centered spaces:    I started as a volunteer at the Children's Museum in Los Angeles and for my senior year in high school I developed a photographic portfolio of children experimenting with the different stations set up with hands on equipment. At the time every station had an assistant who would tell the children what they were playing with and what it was used for. The great aspect of the Children museum was the hands on activities. Each station had a theme and many were based on careers such as medicine or technology. Other stations were based on learning about other people or places such as the blind room where one puts on a bandana covering their eyes and then they would touch the walls trying to feel what the different texture were like. For me it was a great experience and something I looked forward to going to every week. I found myself not only working with the kids but observing how the parents and teachers interacted with the kids. Many times a parent would not allow the child to actually do any of the work, they would do it for them. On the other hand the teachers would either let the kids run wild or expect papers to be filled out about each station, taking away from the experience. The best groups to work with were the kids who found something interesting and were allowed to stay and play. These kids seemed completely absorbed by what they were doing and became  interested in the activity to its fullest it was almost as if you could see them growing as they played, discussed and tried out the station.    
  •  Using independent study program is really school at home:  I started with an independent study program that basically wanted me to run my classes like a school at home. Since that was counter productive and frustrating, I left them and went on to opening a private school affidavit and accepting three other kids to my three kid school house.

  •  Eclectic schooling: One of the children homeschooled at home through an ISP and so this six year old felt that my house was play time and from there I developed my personal eclectic method. My kids only worked on what they were interested in and read what they wanted to read, played video games and built forts in the back yard. My job was to facilitate learning by developing curriculum that fit what they were interested in while still covering the three Rs. If someone asks me today how did you do it? I really don't know, it was really moment to moment, telling stories, listening to tapes in the car, group reading books old and new such as Harry potter and then all the books J.K Rowling stated were favorite childhood books (yes her plots are sometimes similar to her favorite books). At one point I decided I needed "Classical training" after all I was taking on other peoples kids and what if I was missing something? My masters program turned out to be a behavior based program and unfortunately most of my classes were about controlling the classroom and not much about teaching methods. After I went on to Educational therapy were it was more about methods for different types of kids. For example we learned about hands on teaching, Slingerland for reading and testing for learning disabilities etc...  
  •  My practice is as eclectic as my home school. I teach kids how to study, how to look things up, how to keep up with online classes and organize themselves. Other kids I show them how to attack homework assignments, organize themselves and answer questions. ome students I teach them a subject like a tutor would but always with the goal of teaching them how to figure it out or look things up to reach there goals. My goal at all time is to make the student become independent of me. Not great for building a practice, but good for the kids. I truly believe that with time one can teach a kid to love learning by building interest in subjects and any type of kid can find something that will help them want to learn. It can be very academic or not academic at all. It allows them to say, ya I need to finish this to reach my goal. Now if I can translate this to my online courses for adults, I would be very satisfied.



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