Jeff's Expedition - Поехали!! Every ocean starts with tiny raindrops.

Praises can come in many form. While it is extremely important to keep students motivated, there are many aspects teachers may have to keep in mind for the best results. It is very important to not single students out and put them in an awkward positions. Praises should also be with content, empty praises can be detrimental and even result children to be less welling to perform well without the reward. In class though some people provided example of positive reinforcing with extrinsic reward with skittles. I think that a good teacher should try different methods to see what reward method works the best for each class as the audience plays an important role as well. A good teacher should also be mindful of how students will receive the message by imagine being in their position. I also really like the idea of group praises and let peers encourage themselves. Students feel much more comfortable between each other than in contrast, from a top to down position such as teacher (Teacher ...

"It is important that teachers understand the positive as well as the possible negative consequences of praising students" It is a very interesting idea as we often associate praises as a positive thing. Between friends and family we often do it naturally, but when it comes to teaching there seems to be an art behind it. I think that high school can be a sensitive age where peer pressure and socialization among fellow students play and huge role in students lives. Teachers should avoid situations mentioned in the text, and  instead of singling a person to out we can share ideas to the class. If we work as a "we" group, the praised student will be more comfortable, as well as creating s positive learning experience where students are comfortable to share their ideas. "Only aloof and “detached” teachers (who I described as “mere instructors” in the opening paragraph above) may be able to adopt a more or less calculating or rationally deliberative relational a...

I think that flipped classroom is a great supplement for teachers. Students will be able to watch the videos on their own pace and re-watch them whenever revisions are needed. It also promotes peer learning and gives teacher a lot more insight about how well the students are understanding the materials. This concise and readily available should certainly be an important part of future classrooms. However like most good things there are downsides of flipped classrooms. The classrooms rely on students to actively participate in the video watching. Many may forget or simply do not want to watch the videos. Some rewarding systems may be needed to address this potential downfall (when teachers give student reward for watching the videos, or some sort of quiz on the videos). Also there are aspects of in class participation and discussions that cannot be replaced by flipped classroom, there are still many important and helpful benefits from traditional classroom teaching such as attending t...

On "Becoming a Reflective Teacher" the author Carl discusses the importance of being open minded, responsible, and wholehearted. The article explains in detail about what is expected and should be done as an effective and reflective teacher in which students can learn in the best way possible. I find that many aspects that the article talks about are expected in today's teaching. In other words the expectation of teaching has grown, much better education qualities are expected, which is positive for students. Example such as Mary Smith in the text will certainly be not acceptable in today's teaching practice. The principles are still very relevant today and are parts of the core concept of teaching. In our classes we are contently looking for ways to be more reflective and promote dynamic interactions with pupils. For me being open minded is to be learning with the students as well (similar to Frank McCourts' ideas we visited last week), I would let to invite st...

 A teacher is also learning just like the student. Every classroom provide a learning opportunity to learn about the students. In the videos we saw how Frank merged with the high school students and embraced their frustrations with the learning materials. He also used his immegrarion stories to empathized with students with difficulties. I think that Frank's approach on teaching is very inspiring. He had to adapt to the foreign circumstances and make the best of what he had. We as teachers will not always be best equip with materials for the class, what is important is to have the will and motivation to better ourselves as much as we can. I agree with Frank when he said you stop being a teacher once you stopped learning. Franks humbling attitude toward teaching is very important for us to look up to. As a teacher he never tried to have a up-to-down attitude while facing students, he mentioned about unmasking as a teacher and instead bringing out his true personalities While tha...

Entrance Slip Possibility After the first week I have formulated three possible inquiry question: 1. How can we encourage students to think physics as a fun subject and have self motivation to solve the problem? 2. How can we encourage peers to help each other out in group setting? (How they can self teach) 3. How we can promote critical thinking and apply the scientific methods to physics classrooms. (Question their "intuition") ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment from peers: 1. Open ended question, great! 2. Focus on strategies:  How can we encourage peers to help each other out in group setting? (What are the strategies we can in-plant in classrooms) 3. Elaborate on "scientific methods": How we can promote critical thinking and apply inquiry/hypothesis to physics classrooms. (Question their "intuition")

9/7 The discussions today touched on very interesting topics about what is practical math and how we can apply to teaching. Many argued that "efficiency" is the key that limits our ability to deliver the background/method/logic behind the math we teach, hence for many fields math is just a tool and the traditional view is that the practical usage of math should be emphasize more. Then there were interesting arguments of how much of the background/history of math should be included since they actually serve very important values not only in math but to education a world view as well (it promotes a more globalize view and shows that math in many ways are connected to different civilization/ one pointed out that Islamic world have important value in the history of mathematics and many students nowadays do not know about it). We came out with a important point that different students in different classes may not benefit the same way with the same amount of introduction to the...

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