Chapter 10

This chapter gives us ways to get students to do things outside of the classroom that has them use the knowledge they learned. Things like internships, have projects that involve experts, have them look toward summer and enrichment programs and support their learning on their own. Making this connection to the outside world with students will help them appreciate and value school more than they did before. Students are simply looking to be intrigued and inspired with the work they do and if they never get that then there is no motivation for them to be in school.

Chapter 9

This chapter is about trying to make any rough edges smooth before you even get to them. Like when a student feels discouraged with school it usually means that something went wrong with the grades they are getting or got. It could also be that the student isn't secure or lacks the confidence needed to be appreciated. The students created a list of questions that teachers should ask before grades a posted and after they are. One student said that a new teacher should be sure to maintain control and or of his or her classroom environment. There is another important section that deals with what to do when things go wrong. In it Cushman says don't be afraid to apologize, reexamine your teaching approach, don't take a bad day too hard, your success shouldn't be based on whether or not your students like you and don't try to be a superhero.

Chapter 8

This was a very important chapter in this book. It is so important because we as teacher need to know what to expect in any situation and this may very well be a situation that many of us face. When you have an English learning student in your class they will feel uncomfortable to answer questions or share work for fear of messing up their English. But what we as teachers need to do is ensure that their grammar skills, accents and other differences they may have don't get made fun of. Getting them to take risks is an essential part of them learning the language so look past spelling errors and grammar mistakes, ask them if they are understanding the content that we are teaching to them and make sure that we give them alternate ways to present the knowledge on the subject.

Chapter 7

There is some material that will come difficult to some students, I actually experienced this when I was in the classroom. This chapter tries to help us as teacher create ways that will get the student to better understand and learn those harder materials. Ways such as breaking down the material, linking the material to something that they already know or can do, make connections to things they already do and use different approaches when teaching the material. Getting students to think about the subject will get them to better understand and get them to remember it better when it is time to take the test than when they are just trying to cram knowledge in their brain for the test.

Chapter 6

This chapter is talks about the reasons why students go to school and why they would stay in school. It is also about what motivates the students as well as what makes them bored. Andres tells us that a reason he attends school because he wants to reach his full potential even though some of the classes he doesn't like. By connecting the lessons and activities that a teacher is doing you will create a classroom that is going to be less boring to all of you students. Basically keep the students actively thinking about what is being taught and how they can use it.

Chapter 5

This chapter has two parts. First Cushman presents concepts of how each individual student works in the classroom. The second part is about the same ideas but instead of individuals it is about groups. Cushman has different types of student classifications on the individual basis. When doing things with groups, the groups need to be set up with a purpose (the students should get something out of it).

Chapter 4

Inform students of the high expectations you have of them. This will help create a culture of success. No human is perfect, so 2nd chances should be given to students who do try to complete their work on time. It's only fair that students get rewarded for the work they attempt. DON'T FAVOR ANY STUDENTS. Allow students to have an opinion on something and ensure that their opinion doesn't get made fun of or disregarded. All of these are ways to create a successful class culture.

Chapter 3

The chapter describes how to create, keep and identify ways and problems that arise when making an orderly and purposeful classroom. When creating this classroom a teacher needs to inform the students indirectly that he or she truly wants the them to learn and succeed in the classroom. To keep an orderly and purposeful classroom one must get the entire class involved in making class rule and having class discussion throughout the year. Identifying disruptions and dealing with them in a respectful and proper (for the situation) manner.

Creativity Exercises

For my left brain activity I finished a Sudoku puzzle and a probability problem that asked how many sock will I need to pull out of bureau drawer, with out looking, that has 10 of one color and 20 of another. I answered 3 which was right. This made me think about how many different socks were in the drawer and how many I needed. For my right brain I solved the line puzzle that was given on Wednesday that was on the site that was given to us. This puzzle I found to be challenging but I really got me to think about the steps I needed to take in order to complete the puzzle. "When primitive man screamed and beat the ground with sticks, they called it "witchcraft." When modern man does the same thing, they call it "golf." - Ann Landers. I liked the relationship that Ann created between witchcraft, the primitive era and modern golf. Me loving to play golf I got a chuckle. My inspiration is a quote that i got from the first Spiderman movie. The quote is from the Green Goblin and he said "We are who we choose to be, so choose." I like this quote because it reminds me that I and only I am in control of my life.

Focus the Nation

I took a look at the 2% solution video on the Focus the Nation website. The movie was a well put together documentary of the very real future of our nation with our continued fossil fuel consumption and solution to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The main solution that they talked about was reducing major industrial gas emissions by 2% each year until 2050 to reduce the grand total of pollution released to 80%. Dupont has already reduce there gas emissions by 67% from the late 1990's which is a great start.

A different possibility that we could reduce emissions is by selling oil permits to our major industries. This would restrict big industries to only a limited supply of oil forcing them to create clean and more effective means of production. Also the money gained by the government, on the better side of 100 billion dollars, could and hopefully would go into research and development of more and cleaner method of production and cleaner merchandise. Like say hydrogen cars.

If i were to ask my classroom to use this information I would ask them to budget the 100 billion dollars into different organizations that keep or create a more green environment.

Web 2.0 Educator

I took a look at Wesley Fryer's Blog and listened to a couple of his podcasts and he is a great motivational speaker and he has very well developed insights on education. It seem pretty clear from listening to his podcasts that Wes is an educator. He teaches and talks to others about a new age of learning. He describes that students respond more effectively when they instant feedback, like say a student is writing a poem and he or she writes and records it. When she listens to the recording she will know instantly if he or she would want to edit anything. Also he feels that sometimes when having a student do a project with the audience being the teacher, the student may not perform as well but put a little technology into the mix say instead of the audience be the teacher make the audience the world wide web, then you'll get a more positive outcome from students.

Type I and Type II Technology

Type I technology is technology that helps the teacher teach things in the same or in a similar way. Type II technology is quite the opposite. It's technology that helps teach things in new ways.
Type I
Scout Camp leather making using the same technology to change the leather.
calculators
chalk board

Type II
computer technology
video production - VHS, DVD
displays - using powerpoint as apposed to using the white board

My Mel experiences

• Student/teacher relation: In third grade my teacher helped me much with my math. She kept my interested in it and math ended up being my favorite subject for the rest of my life.
• Making things interesting: My forth grade teacher knew how to get her students involve in any of the subjects. She was very good at setting up different games that helped us learn more about History, English, science and math. She also rewarded us when we got something correct.
• Leadership: My fifth grade teacher was a leader. We were like her troops and she would direct us in the right direction when we needed it. Like when I was having trouble with grammar she would try to get me back on track and let me discover the right way instead of just telling me the right way.
• Poverty: Again my fifth grade teacher. In Buxton, ME there isn’t a lot of diversity but we did have and African American in my fifth grade class. The beauty about my teacher was that she didn’t see a color difference all see saw was another student that was in her class.
• Motivating underachievers: believe it or not my home base teacher in high school was the biggest motivator of under achievers. He kept assignments simple but very educational. He was a teacher that made people and his student laugh and kept them working.

Quick Response to Chapter 2

Fairness, respect, trust and no bias inside the classroom is something that students desire from every teacher. I am surprised that students have a very strong idea of what they want the teacher to be like.
These ideas are very important to have in a class in order to create a safe learning environment. It also gets the students to understand that you as the teacher want them to learn and succeed instead of just allowing them to fail.

Quick Response to Chapter 1

In the reading there was an idea that a teacher should know where each of their students live. This idea surprised me because a teacher really shouldn’t know exactly where each of the students live because it’s unprofessional. But I feel instead of knowing the exact location of each student, a teacher should know the area that their students come from.
It jumped out at me because it isn’t right or professional to know where a student lives and go and see them at their house. It is also a good idea to know the area that the student lives in because it might have an impact on how the act in class or how they learn.