Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Chapter 2
Dr. Cantu asked us in his chapter 2 video to describe our teaching style. I thought about this and remembered when I started teaching my style could be referred to as almost textbook behaviorism. I believed in setting up students for success by making sure they passed the first quiz and then I used shaping, positive reinforcement and everything else I could find from B.F. Skinner. This did have a measure of success but with time comes change, change of students, change of expectations and myself changing. Now I would probably be described as more of a cognitive/experimentation teacher focusing on projects, cooperative learning and more facilitator than teacher led. However, there are still elements of behaviorism that creep into my teaching. For example, I still start every semester or every new class with an activity where the students find success, then they go through a self-fulfilling prophecy of believing they can be successful in my classroom and they are. I like it that I am still able to change when needed, yet I keep true to my beliefs that all children can an do learn and I also believe children learn best where they feel loved.
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That is really encouraging that you can see how you have grown/changed over the years- and it's a great progression! Some teachers might go the opposite way by becoming lazy and therefore the students become lazy. I would be interested to hear about some of the activities you do where students can always be successful. For English, I like to ask students to convince me of a certain definition for a random word that has to do with our lesson, or for the students to discuss something about our reading for that day.
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