“Student Engagement” Please respond to the following:

• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of one technique that equips students with the tools that promote self-motivation and a desire for learning.
• From the e-Activity, select two of the 10 qualities that foster student engagement and incorporate them into a suggestion that would enhance a lesson

Peer Response

Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of one technique that equips students with the tools that promote self-motivation and a desire for learning.

A supportive environment encourages students abilities, diversities are celebrated, and students feel safe sharing their opinions. A supportive environment is also great for minority students because they know that their color and culture will not hinder their education but will only enhance it. The other strengths of a supportive environment are collaboration, creates a sense of communication and improves peer relationships. The weakness of this strategy is that teachers may be thought of as incapable of disciplining students. It is essential that as teachers encourage openness, they must also ensure that they demand respect and make sure there are consequences.

•    From the e-Activity, select two of the ten qualities that foster student engagement and incorporate them into a suggestion that would enhance a lesson.

“Product focus means that the work students are assigned to do is connected to a result that is meaningful to them” (Bowen, n.d., n.p.). Students should have a connection to their assignments, especially as they are being bogged down with homework and worried about standardized tests; many of them probably wondering how any of that will prepare them for college and career. This quality deals with taking the subjects and finding new ways to make them relatable. For example, in a history class, a teacher can allow students to choose a theme and give them the freedom to determine how they want to present it to the class and set their deadlines. Lastly, ensuring that students can synthesize their project with current events and showing how it affects them or those around them is essential.

“Authenticity means students are given work that is genuine to the students” (Bowen, n.d., n.p.) This quality is strongly connected with product focus because it illustrates the importance of connection. Lectures and textbooks are no longer enough to keep students engaged and students must be in an environment where they can work involve a topic that matters to them, which keeps them excited and motivated about school. Authenticity can include a few things such as an activity that focuses on real-world relatable problems and going outside of the classroom and encouraging open-ended investigations.

Initial Post 2

“Sum It Up” Please respond to the following:

• Assess how your own theories of learning, teaching, and leadership have matured or changed since the beginning of this course.
• Write a speech that you would give to a friend in an elevator summing up the contents of this course. You have 30 to 90 seconds to inform your friend of the most important elements. Go!

Peer Response

Improve, refine and adjust our lessons or learning strategies. This is something that I am still trying to improve on because it is understand what students are not getting and so on. I went to a formative assessment training and we talked about tracking data and knowing what to do with that data. I was so relieved when most of the teachers there revealed that they did not know what to do with the data that they had collected for various reasons. I am hoping that this year I become more intentional about sitting down and reviewing my data and figuring out how to differentiate in the class when only a few students need to be enrichment and so on. I want to be able to meet my student’s needs directly. I do not want to take negative data personal and beat myself up, but I want to use it as a way to tighten up on instruction or differentiate better. That is the purpose of data, but I think for so long, even as a child in school, negative data reflected the teacher’s inefficiency, which is wrong, rather than his/hers opportunity to regroup and reteach effectively. I feel that through this class, and other professional development I have taken this summer I have the confidence and tools to make some changes, become more intentional, and decipher through hard things that I was not sure about before.

This class is all about learning how different parties view our educational system. There are many metaphors these parties may use to explain who we are, what we do, or the affect our system has on students and society. These are important in order to understand how to change the vary system we work within. There are two ways to change a system, either by policy reform or transformation- which is usually more affective. The whole idea is for schools in the US to change from bureaucratic systems to learning organizations.