How Do I Start Thinking Like A Teacher?

I feel that I have been thinking like a teacher for a while. I took a lot of English classes in high school that I didn't need to take, and found myself caring more that others were understanding the material because I knew it already.

This class helped open my eyes to a lot of the parts of being a teacher that I had never thought of before. Thank you!!

Which Theories and Historical Influences...

I really enjoyed reading everyone's projects on the historical changes in teaching. I think that the peer editing was a wonderful idea for that project.

I would like to know what is going on with that legislation to split up the state into only 19 or so districts!

How Can I Use Knowledge of the Learner to Be a Better Teacher?

I enjoyed very much the table arrangements, because things like classroom arranging had never occured to me as a part of making a proper learning environment. I also benifited highly from the worksheets and readings we did on the social classes.

I'd love to know if there are any classes to take on the social classes and teaching them.

How Can I Be Successful At UMF?

The four year plan is an excellent way to plan for success at UMF, and also all of the group work we did helped me to work with others who have the same goals in mind as myself, which I feel is a very imporant part of success at UMF.

I would like to know how bad it looks to potential jobs if it takes more than 4 years for you to finish college, because in my case I work to put myself through college and can only take a certain number of classes per semester as a result.

How Do I Become A Teacher?

I feel that when we had to look up how to register as teachers in our respective states I really learned a lot about what it will take to become a teacher, both in experience, college time and money wise. I also felt that researching the professional orginizations helped as well, giving me a sense of what support will be helpful for me to have.

One of the things that I'd like to know more about this is whether or not it is worth it to go for your masters straight off or to wait and work at a school who will pay for you to go.

Symposium Day

During the University of Maine at Farmington's annual Symposium Day I attended a series of essay readings put on by the First-Year-Seminar Democracy class. The topics discussed ranged from the role of religion in democracy to the role of the Granges in the formation of democracy to morality in democracy and the appreciation of the self within a democracy. The presenters weren't all students I knew, but two of the students I did know were Heather and Kurt. I enjoyed the essays very much, they were full of good information and well researched points, however I think that the presentations themselves could have been spiced up a bit perhaps with soem sort of visual aids or handouts.

On a future Symposium Day maybe I could present something on research done on different teaching styles and their effectiveness in classrooms. This is something that I am very interested in and maybe weven something that people would benefit from knowing something about.

Campuswide Interventions That Improve Student Acheivement

"One of the reasons that middle-class students do better in school is that their parents intervene to lessen the impact of the roller coaster."

I had seen evidence of this in my own high school, but had never made the connection. The truth in this has been shown over and over again. If I or others of equal or even higher SES than I had any issues in school, if our grades were slipping, if we had issues with other classmates, if we had problems with a teacher, if we had questions about the validity of a grade, or even if we just had questions on an assignment would be right there by our sides or representing us and getting us the solutions, answers or processes started. I did have friends in lower SES groups, and it is true that when they had issues they had no back-up, no support, no prize-fighters willing to go into the ring instead of them. When those friends had an issue with a teacher, even if the teacher was the one in the wrong, my friends lost without the support of their guardians. I think this is a sad and unappreciated truth.