I think this will almost certainly change over the next few years as I have yet to begin teaching and have a feeling that will change my way of thinking. But I am a Film and Media Studies specialist and I want that to be incorporated in the way I teach. Through great advancement thanks to large amounts of research, we have learned that not all students learn the same and so they must be taught differently as well. But, this does not mean that we should separate students based on their learning habits, instead I would like to use this knowledge to my advantage and attempt to incorporate this in to my teaching. Inventions like the radio and video have increased the number of ways students can learn the same material and gives more students the chance to succeed than ever before.
With the sudden advancements in technology that we currently have, I hope to further incorporate those technologies into the classes I teach in an attempt to provide knowledge to as many students as possible in as many ways as possible.
The three main ways that we learn are auditory, visual and kinesthetic. I hope to incorporate these ideas into all of my classes. The first two, auditory and visual, are easy to incorporate thanks in large part to the internet, readily accessible by the public only in the last 30 years. This will allow me to easily add audio podcasts of just about anything and sites like Youtube will allow me to show video clips to help incorporate the visual learners in the class. The final model, kinesthetic, will be the hardest to help but some kind of handout will likely help the students that fit this model the best. Another good idea for the kinesthetic students would be to try to add some form of group work every class period. It may not always be easy to incorporate them all every class but trying to find an even amount of time for all three will hopefully help the students to be engaged and learning something new every class period.
As mentioned previously, I do not have any true teaching experience but that does not mean that I haven't had some practice teaching people in the past. I have always enjoyed helping to work with some of the students in my classes who were struggling with the work we were learning.
I also attended and staffed twice a leadership training course for Boy Scouts. In it, the big emphasis is not only how to lead others but also how to teach people to learn new things. We constantly worked on strategies for how to effectively teach other scouts the skills they would need.
In the last year when I took a break between undergrad and grad school, I worked as a server and spent over half my time as a server trainer. Many of you who have met me know that I can talk, a lot, and I attacked that by explaining things to the new employees and took a very hands-approach. These previous experiences do remind me a lot of what we do in teaching so I'm hoping to be able to carry on those experiences in to my work in the classroom. The leadership training will help with teaching in front of the class and the server training should help with teaching students one on one in office hours.
I've learned that my previous work experiences have largely shaped my philosophy of teaching. Training adults to do their jobs is very similar to college composition in which we are teaching adults (and they may have even been the same/ or close to the age of the servers you trained. I like your incorporation of the three types of learning styles but can you provide a little more expansion to it? That and the use of (digital) technology in the classroom? I also like your commentary on not isolating students due to their learning style.
ReplyDeleteI really like your idea of wanting to work with auditory, visual, and kinesthetic tasks for different students. While this is an awesome goal to have each day, it may not be something you are able to do each day, as you've said. I personally feel like a lot of teachers who have been at this for some time (I heard this from HS teachers, not professors) will say you have to make a choice, you cant cater and coddle to all the babies in the room every single day. While this is true, it's also contingent. I very much think it's absolutely possible to have an auditory, visual, and kinesthetic lesson in one hour, and you dont even have to break into small groups. Yes it takes more time on your part on the forefront, but if were not really here to just do the bare minimum.
ReplyDeletePs. Check out Todd McGowan's The Real Gaze Film Theory after Lacan
I loved this book, but it deals heavily with psychoanalytic views of film. Also check out any of the Pop Culture conferences, they love newbies! The SWPCA is a great one, it was held in ABQ in 2014, or go to the Vegas one, PCA, it's at a casino, and well... you can imagine a bunch of literary nerds sitting around the blackjack table. :)
I think your attention to the different learning styles is crucial for teaching students, and it is a part of my teaching philosophy as well. By seeking out the types of learners that comprise a classroom, we can tune the information to their needs without excluding any other group. I think that we need to be mindful, however, that our learning styles might differ from some of our students; this being addressed, I feel as if it is necessary to view assignments and lesson plans objectively when designing them. It is imperative that, when considering the different kinds of learners, we are sure that each assignment has learning outcomes that can be achieved by all types, despite those it might be tailored for. I also think that, given your attention to technologically mediated information, you want to be sure to not discount other forms of information!
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