Philosophy

In less than 250 words describe your educational philosophy, here is mine, a work in progress that I am sure will change and evolve as I mature and evolve as a classroom teacher.

My quest to inspire students, through high expectations and meaningful interactions will enable each to become a lifelong learner. As a teacher of social studies, I want students to fully comprehend that the limits to their personal academic achievement, are only the ones they place on themselves in their journey for an awareness of our global neighborhood. The study of cultures past, present and events that fashioned our world is an exciting relevant field of study of humankind today.

I will be taking an inquisitive look into the narratives of other cultures. This approach will guide students and teacher alike, into a more perceptive analysis of their global community. This should promote the ideology that there is always more to a civilization, your own and others, than just the superficial appearance of that society. Engaging students in this manner should lead them to question the status quo and fuel a desire for deeper discovery into why some cultures continue to survive. I specifically want students to not just learn how to learn but ultimately learn how to think.
Please comment with your philosophy or provide a link to it. It truly is a great time in history to become a social studies teacher.

Good Fences?

The Mending Wall by Robert Frost is a great poem. I was reminded today about something cool I learned "Wordle"  Wordles are great fun and a great way to see things from a different perspective. for instance the poem I just mention the "Mending wall" if you know the poem you know that it has many perplexing lines and different possible meanings... IE the meanings the author intended and the meanings you glean from the text. a Wordle will offer a different view that may reveal to you an even deeper meaning that you had not realized or a simple meaning that you just overlooked. The words will be large and small, vertical and horizontal, and many different colors, all this will force you to view it differently. Study my Wordle of Frost's Mending Wall (or click) and tell me what you see.



Follow this link to read the Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Good Fences Make ????

The Gutter, A Life Altering Experinence

The summer has been great, but too short like they always are; there never seems to be enough time (or money) to do all the things you want to do. I really wanted to explore more on the whole psychology and epistemology thoughts than I have. I did however, rediscover while working on a project this summer my first encounter (that I remember) with the power of the spoken word. I, from an infant to my then just over 4 years of age was an avid climber and I still really enjoy climbing, but because of the incident that I am about to relay there is one very important aspect of climbing that virtually prohibits me from climbing. This problem is the inability to climb down and here is why.
To set the stage I must first give you back story and a visual aid.

It was a hot summer evening in early August, circa 1968, not to be confused with the "summer of 69," my parents were at the Tri-County Fair Horse Show. My brothers and I were left in the very capable trust of my Mother's parents, momma (mom maw) and daddad (dad dad), I was 4 and JM, 5 since February, which means Zack was about 17 months and no Seth for about 2 more years. The house was much whiter then and the closed up sliding glass door had not yet been installed where a window was. the patio area was filled with flag (field) stone, "big flat rocks," and we were all outside. Daddad was tossing a ball onto the roof and JM and I were trying to catch it when it rolled slowly off, never knowing fully which direction to run and catch the ball until it first appeared clearing the gutter. Keep this gutter in mind for later. The roof on the house was a metal roof and as such it was equipped with snow cleats. I didn't know what snow cleats were or what they were supposed to do in an official capacity, but what I did know was they would catch the ball as it was rolling off the roof and redirect it to the left or right before it cleared the gutter. These snow cleats also had the ability to almost completely stop the momentum of the ball and prevent it from rolling off the roof. Evidently that is exactly what snow cleats are suppose to do, stop the snow from sliding off the roof. JM and I were really enjoying our game with daddad and I'm sure to some degree wearing him completely out while Momma was trying to occupy Zack. As I recall she was sitting in a metal rocker type porch chair holding and rocking Zack in fine grandma fashion. Which of course meant she was singing a song (lullaby... NOT) and thumping, yes thumping Zack in mouth with her finger as she sang, somehow thinking this would be comforting to him. This singing and rocking was of no concern to JM and me as we were feverishly chasing the ball and begging for more when the unthinkable happened. The ball gently caught by the snow cleat held to almost an eternity, then slowly easing from the cleat's grasp, but lacked the momentum to clear the gutter, remember the gutter in the visual aid? Now the ball was trapped in the gutter and what seemed to be the certain end to all our fun, but wait maybe we have another ball, JM go check the toy box... no no that was the only ball. What to do what to do?? I know what to do I'll just climb up and get the ball (insert another visual aid here) take a close look at the downspout and gutter. I could climb a pipe, I mean who couldn't climb a pipe.

I started climbing up the downspout until I reached the gutter at which point I shifted to the finger hang from the gutter hand over hand out to the ball, pulling myself up to look in the gutter to locate the ball and figure out just how far down the gutter I had to go to retrieve the ball from the gutter climb down and resume our wonderful ball chasing fun. I did all these things without being noticed by anybody, especially the adults and if memory serves me correctly daddad was still preoccupied with resting #1 and #2 lamenting about how sad it was that we didn't have a ball to play with any longer,

(it is fair to say I was not yet familiar with sarcasm). upon reaching the ball and reaching up into the gutter holding on with one hand and a chin, I grabbed the ball threw it out of the gutter and exclaimed, I got it!!! and from that moment on boy did I get it!!! Momma turned around and screamed which scared me to death, Zack too I'm sure, and then she said the most powerful words that crippled me for life... she said, "you can't do that!" And from that moment on I couldn't. I had just done what was seemingly impossible for a not yet 5 year old and was hanging from the gutter, which I had no idea wasn't nailed up good enough to hold me, and yet there I was, having shimmied up the downspout and hand over hand out the gutter, retrieved the ball, and now crippled with fear; something I had not yet known. What to do... what to do?? Paul, (daddad) go get a chair out of the kitchen, in daddad went and out he came with a chair that was still two feet shy of reaching my short little legs. daddad on the chair reaching for me; a cook bursts through the restaurant kitchen door screaming for "Miss Jenny, to come quick." Miss Jenny then called for her son Roger, "to come quick and get the ladder. Roger went back in the kitchen to get the keys to the shed. Miss Jenny said, "Roger get the ladder quick before that little "Snell boy" falls. To shed he went and came back with a step ladder, daddad set the ladder and climbed up to "rescue" me. I don't know why I didn't just climb down and avoid all the chaos. I don't know why I froze and just hung there on the gutter.  Later, dad and daddad determined my hang time to be at least ten minutes or maybe even closer fifteen. I didn't know what 10 or 15 minutes was because I was still using the "Now and NOT Now" clock and sometimes "not now" was a really long time. speaking of time, (about mid-way across the gutter is where I found the ball) and it only took a few moments to climb and get the ball, and more than forty years later I still can't climb down. I don't mind using ladders and can climb up almost anywhere, but I can't and won't trust myself to climb down. The power of words can and do impact us a lifetime, my grandmother's fear of me getting hurt, translated into filling me with the fear of climbing down. We loved to climb trees as kids, but I never climbed very high in trees unless I could jump out, which is something I had to do, because I couldn't climb down. When we were jumping off the local river bridge all the others kids climbed down to the ledge and then jumped, but not me I couldn't climb down so I jumped from the top of the bridge, a full eight feet or more higher than the ledge. They all thought I was really brave for jumping off the top, but I was actually just more afraid of climbing down to the lower ledge. How does that happen? and Why are those fears so hard to overcome? Even after you gain the ability for logical thought, and greater body control can you just not overcome something so simple. I think this is a question psychologist and sociologist have been trying to answer for a very long time. This has not become a sort of quest for me as well, I have been studying Piaget, Vygotsky, Freud, Adler, Skinner, Maslow, Rogers, and others and their theories about what all the mind can do and does. This melding of reality and perception is a great perplexing mystery. I know from a logical point of view i can work through my fear, yet when confronted with an actual scenario my body betrays my brain. The sympathetic and para-sympathetic systems automatically turn systems on and off, while releasing adrenaline and endorphins. This causes my heart to beat faster, palms to sweat, breathing to become more rapid, blood pressure to elevate, and other clues that my brain perceives as distress and when your are in distress you react in a way that you have been conditioned. If your conditioning has a fear component then it dominates the reaction, regardless of logic. This is why I am constantly asking this question these days... How did you come to know and believe the things you do? Vygotsky and his ZPD is all about opportunity and what scaffolders do with that opportunity that determine a great deal of the outcome. I know this to be true, but want a greater understanding of just why it is true. I feel that if I had a greater understanding of what best to do then all scaffolders could do more and have a greater impact on student learning. Through understanding and applying what I can learn from my own experiences I hope to unlock more of the epistemology mystery. there is more about this story that I will relate to in future posts.

The Gutter

Semester #4 Finally in the Books

I have completed 4 full semesters of college at Fairmont State University. During those 4 semesters I have also taken some CLEP exams( took 2 yesterday, passed!!), and also took 1 summer school class that is already complete (8-5, Monday thru Friday, A) which brings my total credit hrs to 96 in 2 years. I also made the President's list again this semester, that is to say President's list 4 times (4.0) and 96 of 128 hours completed and 18 hrs scheduled for the fall semester 2012. Now I can relax a little this summer or at least til 20Aug2012 when school starts again. Hope everyone has a great summer and I'll see you this fall. Look for some summer time pontificating about epistemology and BIV theories to be blogged about, hope to engage some of my followers in this quest for understanding about; How we come to know all we know?????

Time Flies or "As the Clock Ticks"

"As the Clock Ticks" could be a great soap opera title. Time flies when you are having fun, or even faster when you are very busy. This has been a very busy semester filled with lots of projects and writing assignments. Still this is no excuse for not writing at least one or two posts, but alas I have not done so, so here I am catching up. Many things have happened in the past semester that cause you to think about all that you are doing and what you have left to do. I have finished 87 hours, just finished 3 more hrs for a total of 90 hrs completed and I am preparing for taking and completing 6 hrs more on Thursday, to end this semester with a total 30 hrs and bringing the grand total to 96 hrs in just 4 semesters of study and no Bs. The 24 hrs a semester average has been challenging, but well worth the effort I have put into making this life change at my age. I think there are still some people that do not understand why I wanted to this, stating that I could be making a lot more money doing what I have done my whole life, "Construction." And for the most part those people would be 100% correct I could be making more money, and make no mistake about it I love to operate equipment always have and likely always will, but I have also been a lifelong learner (thanks to some great teachers) and now it is time for me to earn my degree. I like many other non-traditional students have a different point of view to education and the classes we take, and motivation to get done and start the next phase of life, it may be the ticking clock we hear. We may also find ourselves a little jealous of our youthful peers, maybe secretly wishing somehow we could be that age again, but retain all the wisdom and experience we have gained through the years. It may be true "youth is wasted on the young," I know many times I have thought "I wish I had known that when I was younger," but that's enough about that. I read a couple great books over the semester that had some great nuggets of knowledge tucked inside them, Post War by Tony Judt and Coal by Barbara Freese. Both of these books were supplemental resources for classes, and both were great resources and surprisingly good reads. I may have to read Post War many times to fully retain all the nuggets it contained. The Author offered a point of view that provided a closer look at why things happened the way they did and why the decisions made caused the outcomes they did. Some of the concepts could be challenged on their warrants, but then so could the warrants you would use in your challenge. Coal was a great look into the history of coal as researched by an Assistant District Attorney in Michigan trying to learn more about "Clean Air Laws." She explored the topic from several different points of view and you would have never known that she was researching to gain a perspective on clean air legislation had I not just told you. Read both of these books and your understanding of the history about these topics will be changed. The other great topic of the semester came from an article I ran into looking at some information regarding my theories of personality class, that dealt with epistemology (check earlier posts). This coupled with meta-cognition has been a source of many hours of pondering and thesis building fodder. well maybe not thesis building more like question building which led to even more questions and now it seems I have far more questions than answers. I'll close with 2,    1- what do you think about when you are thinking about thinking? (meta-cognition)  and 2- how is it you came to believe the things you believe and what happens when those things you believed to be true change? Please respond with your thoughts I would really like to discuss these topics more.

Standards for Classrooms????

At a time when teacher evaluation and student performance is being debated; I think it is time to look at the classroom standards teachers hold themselves too, so says Anthony Culocci. I read this article and felt the immediate need to post and share the link, so you can read and decide on your own if what he is saying is true. LINK I for one think he is right on point with many of the things he feels are vitally important. Yet, I know there are standards that the state and feds will  hold all accountable for as they relate to student / teacher performance. But these are the kinds of "core values" or "core concepts" all students need to show mastery of regardless of what academic/ life path they choose. These seem somewhat common sense to many and also assumed by many to be taking place in the classroom already, but clearly they are not. These new generations of students have been taught they can "be" and "do" anything they want to "be or do;" without being taught the consequences, accountability, responsibility, sacrifice, education, and dedication it takes to achieve those goals. These students are being set up for disappointment and failure; they may even blame others like parents and teachers for their lack of achieving their goals. After all, if you have never been held accountable "it must be someone else fault." I do agree that many people can "do and be" whatever they choose, but you cannot achieve what you do not dedicate yourself to do. I agree with Anthony particularly on bullets 2,3,and 4, all students will be citizens, either taxpayers or tax consumers, not all students will be rocket scientists, all students need to responsible and accountable for their choices, and there is no substitute for hard work, I do not mean manual labor, I mean hard work where maximum effort is given even if minimal return is the outcome. I hope you read this article and find that as much as somethings change there are at the core of teaching somethings that should not. Please let me know what you think...

Reading, Writing, and well more Writing

The semester is off and running smoothly. Some of the classes I have are covering material that seems like an old hat, but hoping I will find some nuggets along the way that will renew or at least add a new dimension to way I view the subject. I am reminded of a post from a former teacher that explains this quite well, Click hear to view the explanation  (yes hear and see it's a video link) in this link Chimamanda Adichie explains her view of a single story. All this becomes relevant when we set in our minds, that we have the lock on all the ideas and knowledge, "the keepers of the knowledge, the all knowing." Even when we become so called experts in the field, there is still much to learn. What good is knowledge if we only ever view ideas from our own experiences limiting or dismissing the views of others? Coming from a lineage, a long lineage of "know it all's" and having even been surrounded on all sides by "know it all's" and well on my way to being a future "know it all" or as a true "know it all" I have learned you can  NOT know it all if you have but a single story. Well I do NOT know it all and in fact the more I learn the the more I realize just how little I know, but I am learning even about things I already know. Last semester we learned about "scaffolding" (not a raised working platform) and if I do not really learn any new material from these classes, I may learn how to scaffold or model scaffolding to my classmates. This would be a great outcome for those classes. I also have a couple very good and engaging classes, they are being taught by very knowledgeable and engaging professors, each very passionate about their field of study. Both of these classes are giving me more than a single story, challenging what I know and pushing for more abstract "cause and effect" answers. My longer life exposure (age) to some of these concepts gives me an advantage over some of my classmates but the comments from youth offer a different and sometimes enlighting viewpoint. Here are some questions for you to ponder as you drive down the road or find time to debate lofty thoughts over a friendly glass of your favorite "spirit." 
Why do you do the things you do? 
What would you have done or decided if you were the leader contemplating war?
How would you have fixed the economy in 1932? 
How would you have implemented a peace treaty?
How do you know something is true?
What justifications does a new idea have to go through to become real to you?
What does it really mean to be thinking about thinking?
How did you come to believe the things you believe to be true?

This should keep you busy for awhile, I hope you comment with either insights or questions of your own. Please check out the link it is worth the few minutes of time needed to watch.

Semester #4 Starting

Well the first day of classes for the spring semester has come and gone. Five classes all on Tuesday / Thursday starting at 0800 and finishing at 1930, and one online class, for a 6 class 19 hrs. total for the semester. I was able to CLEP a class over the break and I am now a Jr. with a total of 68 hrs completed. The first day is usually filled with syllabus details and expectations and this was the case with all five classes. I am excited to get started, as all my classes look to be very interesting and full of educational nuggets. I didn't really know I would enjoy college this much, I have always liked learning new things, but this has been an even greater experience. With every class I take I find further validation in my decision to embark on this journey. I really do have a passion to learn and teach others, and while I know some of those qualities have always been within me I am also keenly aware that many of my past teachers are the ones that have inspired me (THANK YOU!) and my current teachers are challenging me to learn even more. I know the days will be long and the work will be tough, but each day is a day closer to realizing my goal. I will give further details of courses as the weeks progress, as for now I need to finish some prep reading for class tomorrow.

Semester #3 is in the Books!

I finished my third semester on 16Dec2011. I now have a total of 65 hours completed and well on my way to finishing at least one semester early. I had seven classes this past semester and earned seven A's, and one of the classes was my 30 hour clinical I (teaching experience). I had a great experience observing and teaching middle school students, social studies. This clinical was tied to my growth and development class which by far was one of my toughest and best classes to date. We covered large amounts of good and useful information that will provide insight and understanding into the things I will do as teacher. I'm looking forward to next semester and concentrating on CLEPing two classes during the break. I have enjoyed a wonderful family filled Christmas and New Year Holiday, I am truly blessed. I plan to keep writing and sharing some of the stories and information I am covering in my classes, this is a great exercise and I find it to be beneficial outlet to express my thoughts and aid in my understanding. I encourage and welcome any and all comments.