Weekly Writing for Sept. 16

In this week's readings, I gathered a large amount of information on objectives and interest approach. Throughout my schooling, especially towards the later years, my teachers were demanded to put up all of the objectives and standards on the board. At the time, I saw this as just another item that I didn't need to read. But, as the class went on, and I became disengaged, I would always look back to those objectives to recapture the ideas my teacher was trying to convey. As a potential future educator, I now understand the complete importance of having an interest approach and objectives for the students.

Everything in life has objectives and an interest approach. Hobbies, jobs, and many other items have to be relevant for a person to try out and produce growth. When something new is happening, they give you different goals to accomplish, from starting out on the guitar and learning the strings, to grabbing a book and reading it cover to cover. As a teacher, one of the most effective teaching strategies I have seen is the connection to everyday items. One of my past professors, Dr. Stevens, in the Education Psychology Department at Penn State, seemed to do this without even thinking about it. Every class he taught to us had some relevance, or connection, to our lives. If it was a funny story, a past example, or a case study that he had done in previous years, it all was relevant. I always found myself nodding my head in agreement because I could relate to everything he was saying. That class was, by far, one of my favorite at Penn State. I think about my own teaching some day, and hope I can do half of what he did as an educator. Students have changed over the many years, and today's society is so fast paced a teacher has to not lose stride when things change.

When I completed the articles, I was really questioning if I could create lessons that have clear objectives, and solid interest approaches. I had to sit back, readjust my mindset, and think about what would interest me about a subject. I did this for a while, gaining some insight, but I still felt not fully there. I think all things take time, so creating objectives and interest approaches will just have to be something I have to keep practicing. Education can be an endless abyss of subjects and lessons, but objectives produce small, attainable goals that students can manage each day.

Here is a link to a thread on communities of practice that gave me a few helpful tips on creating new interest approaches: http://communities.naae.org/thread/1521?start=0&tstart=0