White-water Rafting

As Stephen Brookfield points out in his book The Skillful Teacher, teaching can be described at times as white-water rafting. The feelings of going over the rapids and being totally out of control can over take a teacher at anytime during the course. One such white-water trip that I have experienced in the course of teaching that I have been unable to resolve and escape the rapids from is the students that are poor test takers. Although I know the student is knowledgeable in the subject matter and if verbal questions are asked of the student they are able to answer correctly, the student is unable to perform well in the format of multiple choice test questions.  Although as the instructor I can change the format of my tests in my courses there is nothing I can do about the national certification exam the student takes at the end of their program. I had one student in particular that will always haunt me; he was a very bright young man with a lot of ambition and drive. This student was one of my top performers at the clinical site where the knowledge he had learned in the classroom was put into hands on action, but in the classroom he always struggled with taking tests. After observing him for some time I came to the conclusion that he had a problem with reading. In my classes I was able to offer him verbal quizzes so that I would read him the questions and he would verbally give me the answers. This worked very well for the student; the problem was that the national certification exam was a computer based multiple choice test that could not be administered in that fashion. Although the exam was not part of his course work and would not affect his grade in my class, it would determine whether or not he became nationally certified in the field he had come to school for. As I feared when the student took his national certification exam he failed, although that was the outcome I expected due to his test taking history it left me feeling inadequate as an instructor. I truly felt that I should have been able to figure out a way to help this student achieve success and was unable to. Since that student I have had others like him and every time I feel as though I am beating my head against the wall unable to help them achieve their goal of certification.

"Tough Decision"

The decision to buy a car may not seem like a tough one to many people, but to me it is a tough decision.  At this time I have no car payment and really do not want one either, unfortunately I drive a full size pickup and the gas prices are not going down.  For that reason I have to decide whether or not it is a good decision to buy a smaller car for daily driving .

In considering my possible choices the list I have come up with follows:

1. New car

2. Used car with warranty

3. Used car without warranty

4. Fix Jeep that is in garage not being used

5. Keep driving the truck

In order to evaluate the pros and cons of the possible choices I have created a worksheet below:

Possible choices	Information needed	Pros	Cons
New car	Price of car and amount of monthly payments including insurance costs.	·         Mechanically sound ·         Less maintenance cost to begin with ·         Warranty	·         Monthly payment ·         Insurance cost
Used car with warranty	Price of car and amount of monthly payments including insurance costs.	·         Warranty ·         Price of car would be less than a new car	·         Monthly payment ·         Insurance cost ·         Unknown mechanical and maintenance needs
Used car without warranty	Price of car and amount of monthly payments including insurance costs.	·         Cost of car less than first two choices ·         Possibly able to buy car without monthly payment	·         Monthly payment or amount needed to pay cash ·         Insurance cost ·         Unknown mechanical and maintenance needs
Fix Jeep that is in garage not being used	Cost of fixing Jeep and registering through DMV, also insurance costs	·         No payment or large cash amount to purchase	·         Older (1963) ·         No AC ·         Mechanical concerns ·         Less MPG than a car ·         Insurance cost
Keep driving the truck	Nothing	·         No payment or large cash amount to purchase ·         No added insurance costs	·         Gas mileage ·         Maintenance costs ·         Putting miles on truck

After evaluating the choices and reviewing the pros and cons of the decision I have to make I think that my main goal is to save money on fuel expenses.  At this time I am spending around $400.00 per month on gas, although that seems like a large amount of money after looking into the prices of new cars and the payments for them it does not seem quite as large.  As far as my choices listed above that include purchasing a car it would seem that after paying a car payment of $150.00-250.00 per month and insurance of $50.00 per month, then adding the cost of fuel for the car I would not be saving any real money.  I would save money on gas compared to driving the truck but once you add the car payment and insurance payment up the total out of pocket cost would be about the same as continuing to drive the truck.  Fixing the Jeep would not cost as much as purchasing a car and the Jeep would get better gas mileage than the truck.  By driving the Jeep I would also be able to keep the mileage on the truck down making it last longer since replacing the truck would be costly.

At this time I think the best decision would be to do the needed brake job on the Jeep and register it to drive on the road. 

My plan of action for implementing the decision to drive the Jeep is to first have the necessary brake job done and new tires put on the Jeep.  Once that has been completed I then will register the Jeep with the DMV and add it to my insurance policy.  At that point I will be ready to start driving the Jeep and keep track of the gas expense to see how much money I am saving over driving the truck.

Personal Development Journal

Assignment 4.2

The strongest learning experience that I have had this far in my course work is the realization that not only are there different learning styles, but that I myself do not have just one preferred style.  When I took the various learning style assessments they all four told me that I very much had an even split between auditory, visual, and tactile learning style preferences.  I can now see why I have been able to adapt to many different teaching styles while others have seemed to struggle.

By know knowing that my learning style preferences are varied I can improve my learning in the future by using varied approaches to study and learn.  By evaluating the information I need to learn and determining which learning style will suit me the best for retaining the knowledge in my long term memory.  I can then use for instance verbal sorting to help memorize the blood flow through the heart to long term memory. Thus tapping into my auditory learning style preference.

One discovery that I have made is that by watching my students I have been able to better understand their individual learning preferences and adjust my lesson plans to better accommodate them.  By realizing that quite a few of my students seem to lean toward the tactile or kinesthetic learning style I have found that during lecture I am involving them more in a discussion format and having the student actually give the presentation to the class instead of myself.  This allows the student to be up moving around and explaining what they understand about the subject.  The other learning style preferences students also seem to be benefiting by the use of laptops to take lecture notes.  They can follow along with the PowerPoint making notes in the notes section and then print it out later if needed to study.  Also the use of interactive simulation models on the computer have benefited the students and I would like to find more for them to use in order to keep the learning interesting for them.

Thoughts on postsecondary students....

As I read the text book;Learning Style Perspectives by Lynne Celli Sarasin I find it interesting that assumptions that have been made of postsecondary learners seem to right on at least for my learning style.  It does make me wonder though about the secondary learners, are they really any different or have we just made assumptions about them based on the past?  Looking back at my secondary school time I can see that if instructors took to heart the assumptions of postsecondary learners found in chapter three of the text and applied them to me as a secondary learner.  I feel that I would have benefited more and retained more or the knowledge my teachers were trying to instill in me.  What if as secondary educators the lesson plans were created with postsecondary learners in mind.  Would this not help the secondary learners to excel in the postsecondary format?  Obviously I am not talking about the grammar school students but what about the junior high and high school students?

Learning Styles; Can they really help?

As we look at the various learning styles that have been developed over the years it becomes evident that they all seem to share the same ideas about the style of learners.  The three basic learning styles seem to be; Visual, Auditory, and Tactile/Kinesthetic, but is it really that helpful for educators to use the preferred learning style of the student in order for the student to learn?  As we investigate learning styles everyone has an opinion about the importance or nonimportance of educators identifying the learning style preferences of their target audiences.  But what about personal responsibility of the student?  Yes, by helping the student identify their learning style educators can assist them in their learning, but do the educators really need to deliver the information in three different ways in order to reach all students?  In a paper by Simon Cassidy; Learning Styles: An overview of theories, models, and measures, Cassidy explained  some of the key terminology that is used in the field of learning style theories.  He says that learning styles and learning strategies are two different things.  The learning style of an individual is the way he or she prefer to learn information, such as visual, auditory, and tactile.  While learning strategies are how the individual goes about the studying and learning process, such as a visual style learner using flash cards or highlighters to study.  In contrast to the auditory style learner using tape recordings of lectures or reading out loud in order to study and learn the information.  In essence learning strategies are the tools students use in order to compliment their personal learning style.  Knowing this educators should plan for a variety of ways to deliver information to students.  By being aware of the different learning styles and incorporating all of them into delivery of information educators can ensure that every type of learning style will be hit on.  This will ensure that all the students have had at least a portion of the information delivered in their preferred style.  At that point I really think that the student then has the responsibility to use different learning strategies to grasp and comprehend the information that may have been delivered in a style different than their preferred style.  In order for students to achieve mastery of information in the school setting as well as in life they must be able to learn and process information from all types of learning style delivery options.  No one in life is going to cater to one person's learning style all the time and in order to be successful we all have had to come up with strategies to grasp and process information that is essential whether it was delivered in our preferred style or not.